Kevin Harvick dominated Sunday’s Drydene 311, the second of two Drydene 311 NASCAR Cup Series races at Dover International Speedway over the weekend. That dominant performance led to Harvick’s seventh win, putting him back ahead of Denny Hamlin for most wins with one race remaining in the 26-race regular season.
“I love the grit of our race team,” Harvick said. “I think that is what Gene Haas and Tony Stewart (car co-owners) have built at Stewart-Haas Racing — a team with a lot of grit. Sometimes we don’t have the fastest car, but we have guys willing to suck it up, and when we have a weak link that day, someone else will carry the team. I am really proud of that, and that is what it is all about. You are only as good as the people around you, and we have great people.”
Sunday’s win also was the 700th Cup Series win for Ford and Harvick’s 56th-career Cup Series win, tying him with reigning Cup Series champion Kyle Busch for ninth on the all-time wins list.
“I have to thank everybody on our Mobil 1 Ford Mustang,” Harvick said. “Congratulations to Ford on their 700th Cup win. I want to thank everyone on this team. Rodney [Childers, crew chief] and everyone at Stewart-Haas Racing for overcoming what happened yesterday with the track bar and nailing the balance today. I want to thank all the partners — Jimmy Johns, Hunt Brothers Pizza, Busch Beer. I want to say Happy Birthday to [wife] Delana’s mom and Dax, our engineer, same birthday. What a year; what a seven years [since joining Stewart-Haas Racing]. I am just really proud of everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing for being able to drive this car. Week after week, they just put so much effort into making this thing go fast, and it has been a great year.”
Before Harvick even took the checkered flag Sunday, he clinched the regular season championship, taking a 15-point bonus for the 10-race playoffs, set to get underway after the Aug. 29 regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway.
“With Denny [Hamlin] winning yesterday, we needed to win today, and we need all the points we can get,” Harvick said. “I think as you look at these playoffs, you never know what to expect, but I know that as we go week to week, we will give it all we have, and I am just really proud. Thank you to Mobil 1. They put a lot into the oils and lubricants in these cars and grinding to find more horsepower and less drag. It is an honor to drive for these guys.”
Martin Truex collected his second runner-up finish in as many days and as many race. His second-place finish Sunday was his seventh-consecutive top-three result.
“Second or third it seems like every week, here,” Truex said. “On one hand, it’s good, obviously, and you want to be running up front and having good finishes. On the other hand, we didn’t get any better than we were yesterday; it was actually a little bit worse. I was a little disappointed in that. These things are really, really tricky to figure out to get them right. We just had to battle hard all day long, and it took us a long time to get up towards the front in our Bass Pro Shops Camry. We just battled hard with an ill-handling car all day long. Just tried to hang onto what we could and came out with a decent finish.”
A trio of Hendrick Motorsports drivers — Jimmie Johnson, William Byron and Alex Bowman — rounded out the top-five by finishing third, fourth and fifth, respectively.
Meanwhile, Hamlin, Harvick’s closest competitor throughout the 2020 season, so far, and the winner of Saturday’s race at Dover, ran near the front throughout most of the first two-thirds of Sunday’s race before falling off the pace and making an unscheduled pit stop for a loose wheel on lap 227 of the 311-lap race. As a result of the stop, Hamlin went a lap down.
After starting in the 17th position Sunday, Harvick raced into the top-three of the running order on lap 62 and took the lead from Ryan Blaney on lap 69. He took his first of two stage wins of the day a lap later.
While the race was still under caution at the end of the 70-lap first stage, the red flag waved for repairs to the track’s concrete surface in turn four.
Harvick resumed his dominant performance when the race resumed. He did lose the lead, though, during a lap-100 caution when Joey Logano beat him off pit road. But on lap 115, Harvick passed Logano to reassume the lead. Harvick, then, pulled away from the competition and held a six-second lead by the halfway point of the race.
Harvick took his second stage win on lap 185.
Harvick, again, lost his lead, briefly, during a caution inside the final 20 laps of the race when Jimmie Johnson got off pit road first by taking only two tires. Harvick was second out of the pits with four new tires, and when the race restarted, he retook the lead.
Matt DiBenedetto started on the pole Sunday after an inversion of the top-20 finishers from Saturday’s race. Harvick’s Stewart-Haas Racing teammate, Aric Almirola, took the lead on lap 12, and Blaney followed Almirola by DiBenedetto to take second.
Almirola gave up his lead to pit during a lap-33 debris caution, handing the lead over to Blaney. Blaney would maintain that lead until Harvick made his way to the front.
Logano finished the race in the sixth position. Almirola was seventh, Brad Keselowski was eighth, Austin Dillon ninth, and Cole Custer finished 10th.
They yellow flag waved seven times throughout Sunday’s race, including a lap-six caution for a multi-car incident involving Chase Elliott, Kyle Busch, Erik Jones and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., among others. The incident resulted in Elliott’s early exit from the race.
