“Well, it means a lot to me, and it’s funny and ironic how all these things line up, and it’s kind of ironic how we wound up in Victory Lane that day, and Dale’s teams won the first two races, and we were able to win the next race in 2001. You see that 3 back in Victory Lane and us back in Victory Lane tonight, it’s just almost — it’s just how it’s meant to be.” said an elated Harvick after the race.
It was domination that nearly replicated the performance we saw from Harvick on Saturday when he won the Xfinity race and lapped 33 of the 40 cars on the track. He led 181 of the 325 laps with the next closest driver being Kurt Busch in the No. 41 Monster Energy Hass Automation Ford, who led 52 laps. Brad Keselowski in the No. 2 AutoTrader Ford led the third most laps with 38, and expressed after the race that no one had anything for Harvick.
“No, nobody had anything for Kevin today. Not that I’m aware of. Shoot, I think we all threw everything we had at him. He drove a great race, and he had a really fast car, and that’s a potent combination. If he hadn’t had the pit road issue today, he probably would have led almost 300-some laps.”
It was clear early on that Harvick was in a rhythm, winning stage 1 after leading 64 of the 85 laps. Keselowski won stage 2, however, that was only because of a blown tire by Jimmie Johnson in the No. 48 with 11 laps remaining in the stage erased a sizeable lead for Harvick.
The spin by Johnson brought out the caution and would see all of the leaders come into the pits. During the pitstop, Harvick’s team had an issue with their airgun and would fall back on the restart. This issue kept Harvick out of the lead for 66 laps.
Then on lap 226, Harvick regained the lead and only lost it three more times. However, all of those times were only because of strategy from Denny Hamlin in the No. 11 FedEx Toyota and Joey Logano in the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford. Both Hamlin and Logano went with a different pit strategy than the rest of the field, needing to do something to try and get ahead of Harvick.
“Well, I think running long like we did and having fewer stops works when you have a good long-run car.”, explained Hamlin. “It played out for us at Darlington because we had a car that was extremely good in the long run and we didn’t fall off the ledge, so to speak, at the end of a run. It was the same kind of thing today, so we just optimized all the lap time we could on old tires and chose fewer stops instead.”
It was as effective as could be, but the tire wear would show as Harvick continued to chip away at the lead that the one less pit-stop strategy gave Hamlin and Logano. In fact, the last time the No. 11 of Hamlin got out in front, it was from the leaders once again pitting. However, after the strategy saw Hamlin lead 11 laps the first time of the approach and 13 the second time, the third time Hamlin was only able to maintain the lead for two laps before getting passed by Harvick.
A final caution with just 28 laps to go would give the rest of the field one last chance to try their hands at Harvick as the No. 6 AdvoCare Ford of Trevor Bayne blew an engine and spilled fuel on the backstretch. All of the nine cars left on the lead lap and the lucky dog of Kurt Busch, would come down pit road for four tires and fuel. The only cars that had issues on their stops would be Kurt and his brother Kyle, which would shuffle them to the back of the field on the restart keeping them out of contention, while Harvick maintained the lead, winning the race off pit road.
On the restart at lap 304, Harvick got a great jump and started his 21 lap cruise to the finish as he hit all of his marks, slowly increasing his lead lap after lap. As he crossed the start-finish line, he captured his 2nd career Cup victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway with a 2.690-second lead on second place finisher Brad Keselowski. A much less stressful finish than his first win at Atlanta that came by just 0.006 seconds in a photo finish against Jeff Gordon.
“You know, for me there was just a lot of happiness, just to be able to go back and look at that moment, and I was happy for my team and happy for my guys. I love to see them smile, and I love to see them excited.”, said Harvick. “You know, there’s so much work that goes into what we do and the things that happen on the racetrack are hard to make happen, and when you have a night like this, and you have a group of guys that you spend so much time with, there’s nothing better than seeing all those guys smile. I love winning races, and I love running up front, but there’s nothing better than the guys you go in there and battle with every week having a smile on their face.”
After leading 734 of 1,300 laps in the previous four Cup races at Atlanta and coming up just short with three top tens in four of those races, Harvick and his team finally got the monkey off their back.
