FONTANA, Calif.—Stewart-Haas Racing has the opportunity to record three different sweeps on Sunday at Auto Club Speedway. The rub is that SHR teammates can prevent each other from achieving them.
After winning Saturday’s Drive4Clots.com 300 XFINITY Series race at the two-mile track, Kevin Harvick can sweep the NASCAR weekend with a victory in Sunday’s Auto Club 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event. A win also would give Harvick a sweep of the three races on this season’s West Coast swing — Las Vegas, Phoenix and Fontana.
Teammate Kurt Busch, however, can stop Harvick’s juggernaut with a sweep of his own. Busch won the Coors Light Pole Award for Sunday’s race and has topped the speed chart in all three Sprint Cup practice sessions. A win on Sunday would give him a rare sweep of all track activities during a NSCS weekend.
To make the prospect even more tantalizing, the two Stewart-Haas drivers will start the race side-by-side on the front row.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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