March 15, 2015
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
AVONDALE,
Ariz.—Yes, the best car won Sunday’s CampingWorld.com 500 at Phoenix
International Raceway — but one-man juggernaut Kevin Harvick had to hold
off charging Jamie McMurray on the final restart with 12 laps left to
notch his fourth straight victory at the one-mile track.
The
box score will show that the reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champ
led 224 of 312 laps, but McMurray took his best shot on the Lap 301
restart, driving hard to the inside of the race winner and, for the
briefest of moments, clearing Harvick’s No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing
Chevrolet off Turn 2.
But
the driver who has become an all-but-irresistible force in NASCAR’s
premier series fought back to the outside, cleared McMurray’s No. 1
Chevrolet and cruised to the finish line 1.153 seconds ahead of the race
runner-up.
The
victory was Harvick’s second straight this season, his fourth straight
at Phoenix and the 30th of his career. Harvick has won five of the last
six races at the one-mile track in the Sonoran Desert — seven overall —
and his string of seven straight top-two finishes in the Sprint Cup
series, dating to last season, is the longest since Richard Petty
rattled off 11 consecutive top-results in 1975.
“When you said the Richard Petty part, that just gives me chills,” Harvick said after the race.
The
last driver to win four straight NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races at the
same track was Jimmie Johnson at Charlotte in 2004-05.
With
restarts as crucial as they were on Sunday, Harvick was glad he had
raced in the XFINITY Series event on Saturday afternoon.
“The
restarts were just really slippery, and I learned that in the race
yesterday,” said Harvick, who finished third in Saturday’s race. “You
had to really maintain your entrance speed and really slide the thing
through the center of the corner to try to help keep it pointed up off
(the corner).”
Harvick
did that to perfection on the last four restarts, holding off
Stewart-Haas teammate and fifth-place finisher Kurt Busch when action
resumed on Laps 234 and 242 and outdueling McMurray (after Busch pitted
for tires under the ninth of 10 cautions) on Laps 296 and 301.
Ryan
Newman ran third, followed by Kasey Kahne and Busch. Brad Keselowski,
Martin Truex Jr., Joey Logano, Jeff Gordon and Kyle Larson completed the
top 10. Truex posted his fourth consecutive top-10 finish, the first
time a Furniture Row Racing driver has accomplished that feat.
McMurray left the track wishing he had a mulligan on the final restart.
“Matt
McCall (crew chief) made a really good decision at the end to stay out
(on old tires) and got us on the front row,” McMurray said. “That was a
fun battle with Kevin. Those are the kinds you wish you could do over
again, because I would have slid up earlier.
“It’s
similar to plate racing with the engine package we have now, where if
you don’t get the guy cleared, he can kind of stall you out a little
bit. And I saw Kevin coming and I thought I could slide up in front of
him, but I also knew it was for the win and that we would probably have
wrecked there.”
Notes:
With two victories and two second-place finishes this season, Harvick
leaves Phoenix with a 22-point lead over Logano in the series standings…
Dale Earnhardt Jr. blew a right rear tire — the result of a melted bead
— and slammed the Turn 2 wall on Lap 180. Credited with a 43rd-place
finish, Earnhardt dropped four spots to sixth in the series standings,
56 points behind Harvick… Busch scored 39 points in his return from a
three-race suspension, good for 33rd place in the standings. To be
eligible for the series championship, Busch must be in the top 30 in
points at the end of the 26-race regular season.
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