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For
the second time this season, Kevin Harvick found
himself in victory lane after
winning at Lowes Motor Speedway Sunday.
Photo courtesy of nascar.com
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Harvick wins for second time this season,
second time at Charlotte
nascar.com
CONCORD, N.C. -- After 389 laps in NASCAR’s motorsports marathon, the
54th running of the Sunday night’s Coca-Cola 600 Sunday at Charlotte
Motor Speedway came down to an 11-lap shootout -- and Kevin Harvick won
it.
Harvick pulled away during an 11-lap green-flag run to the finish to
beat Kasey Kahne to the finish line by 1.491 seconds. The victory was
Harvick’s second of the season, his second at Charlotte and the 21st of
his career.
Kurt Busch ran third, followed by polesitter Denny Hamlin and Joey
Logano. Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart, Clint Bowyer, Martin Truex Jr. and
Marcos Ambrose completed the top 10.
On a night where the second half of the race produced non-stop action
and plenty of contact, 10 spectators were injured when a TV camera
drive line broke, three of them seriously enough to warrant
transportation to a local hospital.
The speedway announced after the race that all injured were treated and
released.
The pivotal moment in the race was a decision by Harvick and crew chief
Gil Martin to come to pit road for two new tires after NASCAR called a
debris caution on Lap 384 of 400. Kahne stayed out. In fact, he was the
only driver to do so, and Harvick lined up beside the driver of the No.
5 Chevrolet for a restart on Lap 390 with a distinct advantage.
"It was a good strategy call there," Harvick said. "The 5 stayed out,
and we were able to have a little bit fresher tires and get in front of
him on the restart … This is one of those nights where you just know
going in that you’ve got to grind away, lap after lap to keep yourself
on the lead lap and not make any mistakes …
"This is a long night. We’ve been here a lot of times and know that you
just have to grind through mile after mile, keep your car running,
don’t get tore up, don’t get a lap down, and you’re going to be
somewhere around at the end. Everybody did that on our Budweiser Chevy
tonight, and there we were at the end."
For the third time this season on a 1.5-mile speedway, Kahne finished
second with arguably the fastest car. Both he and crew chief Kenny
Francis were surprised that Kahne was the only driver who stayed on the
track during the final caution. Fresh rubber turned the tide in
Harvick’s favor.
"We had a great car from the drop of the green, drove to the front from
sixth," said Kahne, who led a race-high 161 laps. "It was definitely
our race to lose, especially those last 100 laps. We thought that some
of the guys would stay out. I think there were three cars that had just
pitted within the last couple laps, or five or six laps, and (we) just
felt like they’d stay out, and that’d be a big enough buffer to someone
who had two or four (new) tires, that we could get away.
"It didn’t happen. Harvick started right beside me and had two, and he
held it flat through (Turns) 1 and 2, and I had to lift a little bit. I
got a little free getting in, so I had to back off the gas, and when I
went back down, he was in front of me. So that was the end of our race,
and I had to make sure I got second from there."
NASCAR’s longest race took an extraordinary turn on Lap 122 when a
guide cable to the "CamCat," the remote-control mobile camera that
traverses the frontstretch, broke and fell across the track. Several
cars sustained damage from running across the cable, most notably those
of Ambrose and Kyle Busch, then the race leader.
A length of cable wrapped around Ambrose’s rear housing and severed a
brake line. Contact with the fallen cable sliced open the front right
quarter panel of Busch’s Toyota. NASCAR went off the pages of its own
rule book under the exceptional circumstances and allowed all teams to
repair their cars during a 15-minute break in the action.
The sanctioning body restored the running order before the cable broke,
reinstating Ambrose, who lost four laps under repairs, to the lead lap
for a restart on Lap 131. Busch’s team worked feverishly to reconstruct
the damaged quarter panel with black Bear Bond tape.
For the rest of this story, click here
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