It wasn’t what Kevin Harvick needed. A week after a fiery end to the opening race of NASCAR’s 2022 Cup series Playoffs, Harvick again ran into trouble, this week at Kansas.
Harvick looked strong early on and was running sixth shortly after a restart for a competition caution. Just after emerging from a 4-wide battle for position coming out of Turn 4, Bubba Wallace and Ross Chastain were just in front of Harvick. The two got together and slid up the track taking the air off of Harvick’s Ford and sending him into the wall.
The right front wheel was barely hanging on, and after a pit stop to confirm, Harvick limped the car to the garage finishing last on the field.
“When those two cars came up in front of me, I just got super tight,” Harvick said. “When I lifted it grabbed and got loose. I just wasn’t expecting them to come up and my car getting that tight.”
On lap 67, Playoff contender Tyler Reddick who had led from the pole, was leading when his Chevy lost a front tire, and he was sent into the wall becoming the second driver out of the race.
“The right-rear tire just blew like we’ve had a few times,” Reddick said. “At Fontana (Auto Club Speedway), I was able to save it. But here, it snapped at the worst possible point, and we just killed the wall. It broke the control arm on the right-front, so our day was over. We leave here with not a lot of points, so we’ll have to fight hard at Bristol (Motor Speedway).”
Unlike Reddick who came into Kansas above the Playoff cut line and can afford a bad race, Harvick came in the final spot in the Playoffs after scoring DNFs in three straight races for the first time in his Cup career. He will now have one goal as the final race of the first round comes up next Saturday night at Bristol.
“Yeah, it is what it is,” Harvick said. “We were racing to win anyway today, so that is what we will do again next week.”
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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