Kevin Harvick dominated the second half of the Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday night to claim his NASCAR Cup Series leading ninth win of the season. His two most recent wins bookended the first three-race round of the 2020 playoffs that concluded with the Bristol race and sandwiched a Brad Keselowski win the previous weekend at Richmond Raceway to give Ford a sweep of the first round.
“I’m just so happy to drive this Busch Light Ford,” Harvick said. ”I’m so happy to see all these fans in the grandstands. I was so jacked up when I got in this race car tonight to come here and just race and to be able to do that in front of people; that’s the enthusiasm that you get is from the crowd, and I’m so excited for our team. Everybody from Busch Light and Mobil 1, Ford Mustang, Hunt Brothers Pizza, Jimmy John’s, everybody who helps us at the shop. The guys are just doing a great job.”
For his latest win, Harvick took his final lead from Kyle Busch on lap 469 of the 500-lap race. Busch, an eight-time Cup Series Bristol and 22-time winner at the track across all three NASCAR national series finished second, still winless through the first 29 races of the 2020 season.
“To beat Kyle Busch at Bristol, I kind of got myself in a little bit of a ringer, there,” Harvick said. ”I hit a lapped car and got a hole in the right-front nose, but just kept fighting. We don’t have anything else to lose. We were here to try to win a race. I know how much Rodney [Childers, crew chief] really enjoys coming here, and, hell, how can you not enjoy coming here with all this enthusiasm? Everybody is tired of being at home.”
One Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Erik Jones, finished third after he and Busch both started the race in the back, because their cars failed pre-race inspection twice.
With the Bristol race being the final race of the playoff round of 16, the playoff field was whittled to 12 at the checkered flag. William Byron, Matt DiBenedetto, Ryan Blaney and Cole Custer were eliminated from championship contention. Byron was the first driver who lost opportunity for playoff advancement when he retired from the race after wrecking on lap 233. His early exit from the race resulted in a 38th-place finish at Bristol.
“We were running 10th, I believe, and trying to get a couple of stage points,” Byron said. “We had gotten a few in the first stage. Our car was really good, just needed a little bit of track position, I feel like. Probably went the wrong way on the last adjustment – tried to get myself turning a little better and it got too free. Really, the incident, the #51, [Joey Gase], I think it was green and black car, was coming off the corner, and the #95 [Christopher Bell] and I were both running the top. The #51 just checked up in the middle of the straightaway and had nowhere to go. And the #95 slammed on the brakes to try to not hit him, and I slammed into him, because I was on his bumper. So just a terrible situation, but not really sure why that happened or what really transpired for him to stop like that. But go back on SMT like we can now and look at what happened and move on.”
Two of the eliminated drivers finished in the top-20 Saturday night — Blaney in 13th and DiBenedetto 19th. Custer wound up 23rd.
“I’m upset about it,” Blaney said of his first-round playoff elimination. “I don’t want to be knocked out with seven races to go and not be able to run for a championship. I’m not very excited about that, but there’s a lot of things we could have cleaned up as a group together, myself included, and we just didn’t perform. We didn’t perform in the first round like we needed to to transfer, and that’s something you’ll have. We just needed to step up, and we just had too many issues, but we still have seven races left. We’ll try to win one or two of them and try to get fifth in points. We’ve still got that, so there’s still a goal that you’re trying to go to. Yeah, it sucks that you’re not able to run for it, but I’m just disappointed — not really disappointed. It’s kind of hard to put into words. I wish we all had a better three races as a team. I know this team can have great races, and it’s a shame we missed that a little bit.”
Keselowski, the most recent winner of a points-paying race at Bristol, led 82 laps of the opening 125-lap stage that was won by Chase Elliott. Keselowski started on the pole, but lost the lead to Harvick on lap 18. Keselowski retook the lead on lap 43, but lost his lead, again, late in the stage when Elliott took his stage-winning lead on lap 107.
After losing the lead late in the opening stage, Keselowski struggled throughout the remainder of the race, even spending a significant amount of time in the garage and winding up 88 laps down at the checkered flag.
“It was a frustrating night; there is no way around that,” Keselowski said. “I am thankful we were able to lead some laps, but that, certainly, was not what we were hoping for. We had a power steering pump issue. I am not sure exactly what it was. I will let the team guys get to that and chase it down. Obviously, it killed out chances. I don’t know what would have happened if we didn’t have that problem, but we did, so we will move on to the next week, and I am thankful we had the win at Richmond last week to fall back on.”
After Elliott’s stage win, Busch and Harvick combined to lead most of the remaining three-quarters of the race. Busch was up to second by the end of the opening stage and was first off pit road for the second stage.
Busch led throughout the second 125-lap stage and claimed the stage-two win at lap 250.
Harvick, then, led most of the second half of the race, leading a total of 226 laps by the end of the race. He took the lead from Busch on lap 281. Busch was able to pass Harvick for the lead in lapped traffic on 459, but Busch got stuck behind Joey Logano, allowing Harvick to get back by for his race-winning lead 10 laps later.
“Just didn’t have enough at the end,” Busch said. “The guys did a great job and gave me a really great piece tonight to contend and at least be up there and be close. Unfortunately, just didn’t have enough. Lapped cars were definitely a problem. It’s part of racing. You have to try to get around them where you can, and there was just no room for me to do what I needed to do with a couple of those opportunities to get past them.”
Tyler Reddick and Aric Almirola rounded out the top-five of the race finishing order. Finishing sixth through 10th were Clint Bowyer, Elliott, Chris Buescher, Ryan Preece and Michael McDowell.
