Photo Credit: Jessica Bure/SpeedwayMedia.com
Last year, Kevin Harvick won the Chase for the Championship by winning races, and flat out being fast every week. That is something that he has continued into this season, as evident by his statistics in the 13 races thus far.
For the seventh time this season, and second in the last three races, Harvick would find himself in the runner-up spot at the end of the 400 mile event.
Harvick ran up front during the race, leading laps throughout the middle of the race, and held the lead up until a caution with 42 laps to go. He and Jimmie Johnson made the decision to stay out, while the rest of the leaders pitted for either two or four tires. On each of the restarts that followed, Johnson was able to get away, leaving Harvick to fend with Kyle Larson, Kasey Kahne and Martin Truex Jr. for position.
Harvick commented post-race that they struggled on restarts all day, and that was due to the in-car track-car adjuster broke. Harvick commented that he and hsi team have to get that fixed moving forward as that problem has plagued them four different times this year.
“Once the track bar broke, we were pretty much in a box and just kind of had to hold on for the first 25 laps and if we weren’t in the front then we struggled to just maintain what we had,” he commented. “All in all, everybody did a great job, and I think when you look at Dover it’s been a good racetrack for us. We’ve led laps and just haven’t quite finished it yet, but a good, solid day.”
The consistency and speed led Harvick to success last year in winning the championship. So far, he has kicked off a good title defense.
