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Kevin Harvick snaps drought with Michigan win

In 2020, Kevin Harvick lit up the NASCAR Cup Series with a nine-win season that included a sweep of a Michigan International Speedway doubleheader. Nearly two years later, he returned to Victory Lane for the first time after an agonising sixty-five-race winless drought.

After Ross Chastain continued to antagonise everyone in the garage by tapping Christopher Bell and sending him into the wall with forty laps remaining, Harvick held off pole winner Bubba Wallace on the ensuing restart after electing to stay out over pitting. He maintained a steady pace over Wallace and would win by nearly three seconds. It is his sixth Cup victory at Michigan.

“The last restart, I had the #5 (Kyle Larson) behind me, and I knew I didn’t need to let the #23 up,” Harvick recalled in his post-race press conference. “I knew I needed to drive it in the corner far enough, but the #5 had given me such a good push. I had a car length, and I think Bubba got about up to my door. I knew that if we could just get off of turn two, we would have a chance.

“Then they were side-by-side, and then we drove down into turn one and two the next lap, and I watched them. I don’t know what happened. They all wound up all goofed up down there and up the racetrack. I was hoping that the #23 didn’t cycle out to be the second car because then we were going to have a pretty constant race on our hands, but the more they race, the further we got away.

“That’s what you want, right? To try to get away so they don’t have a draft and can make up that time quicker. #5 launched good, #5 gave us a good push, and the key was just clearing the #23 off of two and being able to go down the back straight-away by myself and not door to door and in a firestorm. That all went smooth.”

Daniel Suárez‘s left-front tyre went down with less than five laps to go, which raised some speculation about NASCAR potentially waving the caution flag to bunch the field back up for overtime, though it never came. Harvick noted such fears never came to him as he “didn’t even know [Suárez] had a problem.”

With no caution, Wallace was not able to close the gap to Harvick and settled for second. He led twenty-three laps following becoming the first black Cup pole sitter in sixty years and is riding a seven-race streak of top tens.

“I’ll wear this one on my heart for a while. I failed everybody,” Wallace told NBC after the race. “[…] It is a hell of a job for our team. There’s a lot of positives in this, but I’m a person that looks at the negatives more than the positives. I need to change that, but I want to win so bad, and this was the best opportunity.”

While Chastain might be the main character of NASCAR discourse yet again, the biggest wreck came just a lap after the lap 22 competition caution when J.J. Yeley got loose while racing Michael McDowell in a pack, triggering a nine-car accident that shot Austin Cindric into the outside wall.

“That was not fun at all and inside the driver’s head is certainly a lot less fun too,” commented Cindric. “It feels like an absolute waste to come out here and just get completely wrecked. Just irresponsible, I guess, running in the middle of the pack and just really frustrating to be out of this race this early. Finish dead last and get no points. It’s not exactly what we needed from today. I just wish we would have been able to get some more laps today. […] It’s just a byproduct of a crazy restart with 300 miles left in the race.”

“It is incredibly frustrating because you can think of 100 things you can do to prevent that, but it’s not in your DNA to just back off and just not run close to the pack on the restart, but I think if you remove a few cars from that equation, that doesn’t happen.”

Wallace’s team-mate Ty Gibbs, serving as Kurt Busch‘s injury replacement for the third straight race, scored his maiden Cup Series top ten by finishing tenth. He won the Xfinity Series race the previous day.

Race results

FinishStartNumberDriverTeamManufacturerLapsStatus
1164Kevin HarvickStewart-Haas RacingFord200Running
2123Bubba Wallace23XI RacingToyota200Running
3911Denny HamlinJoe Gibbs RacingToyota200Running
4422Joey LoganoTeam PenskeFord200Running
52412Ryan BlaneyTeam PenskeFord200Running
6719Martin Truex Jr.Joe Gibbs RacingToyota200Running
785Kyle LarsonHendrick MotorsportsChevrolet200Running
81043Erik JonesPetty GMS MotorsportsChevrolet200Running
93048Alex BowmanHendrick MotorsportsChevrolet200Running
101145Ty Gibbs*23XI RacingToyota200Running
11139Chase ElliottHendrick MotorsportsChevrolet200Running
122024William ByronHendrick MotorsportsChevrolet200Running
13263Austin DillonRichard Childress RacingChevrolet200Running
142542Ty DillonPetty GMS MotorsportsChevrolet200Running
15336Brad KeselowskiRFK RacingFord200Running
161917Chris BuescherRFK RacingFord200Running
172131Justin HaleyKaulig RacingChevrolet200Running
183133Austin Hill*Richard Childress RacingChevrolet200Running
19327Corey LaJoieSpire MotorsportsChevrolet200Running
202314Chase BriscoeStewart-Haas RacingFord200Running
213577Josh Bilicki*Spire MotorsportsChevrolet200Running
223451Cody WareRick Ware RacingFord200Running
233678B.J. McLeod*Live Fast MotorsportsFord199Running
24221Ross ChastainTrackhouse Racing TeamChevrolet199Running
251599Daniel SuárezTrackhouse Racing TeamChevrolet198Running
26220Christopher BellJoe Gibbs RacingToyota193Accident
273738Todd GillilandFront Row MotorsportsFord188Running
281434Michael McDowellFront Row MotorsportsFord187Running
2968Tyler ReddickRichard Childress RacingChevrolet110Engine
301216Noah Gragson*Kaulig RacingChevrolet109Accident
311741Cole CusterStewart-Haas RacingFord94Accident
322721Harrison BurtonWood Brothers RacingFord29Accident
332847Ricky Stenhouse Jr.JTG Daugherty RacingChevrolet25Accident
341810Aric AlmirolaStewart-Haas RacingFord25Accident
352915J.J. Yeley*Rick Ware RacingFord24Accident
36318Kyle BuschJoe Gibbs RacingToyota24Accident
3752Austin CindricTeam PenskeFord24Accident
Italics – Competing for Rookie of the Year
* – Ineligible for points

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