It was a NASCAR race without any major catastrophes to speak of. A few guys scraped the wall, that’s sort of traditional at Darlington. There were some brief displays of sparks flying from a car going over 100 miles an hour, but no biggies. Nobody flipped over, no great multi-car smash-ups that NASCAR fans love so much. But, it was a good race anyway… perhaps even better.
Once again it was a case of ‘may the best tires win’, just as it was out in California at Fontana when Kyle Busch chose to put on four fresh ones late in the race and pulled ahead of brother Kurt and Tony Stewart, who only went with two.
The time it was Kevin Harvick and his crew who chose to take those few precious extra seconds it took to change the left side tires as well for the final run at the checkered flag and that move won them the race.
It looked for the longest time like Jeff Gordon was going to sit back in second place and do the old standard ‘slingshot’ move on the leader on the final lap to win the race. We’ve all seen him do it before and I’d wager that’s exactly what ole Jeff had in mind all along.
But it didn’t work out that way as Gordon’s teammate Jimmie Johnson stuck his familiar nose into the mix of the top five runners and quickly established himself as a serious contender for the win.
All in all it was a terrific outing for Hendrick MotorSports as Dale Earnhardt Jr., who had to settle for second after being passed by Harvick on the penultimate lap, just barely held off last year’s Sprint Cup Champ, Jimmie Johnson who finished third and then Jeff Gordon in the 24 car who somehow managed to get pushed back to a seventh place finish after running close to the front for most of the race.
An ecstatic Kevin Harvick told the press after the race, “We were able to hang on there at the end, and I knew I had that high line I hadn’t showed it to them all night on the restarts, and I wanted to save it until the very end.”
The win at Darlington was the second for Kevin Harvick this year, the first NASCAR driver to score two victories this season. He took the checkered flag at Phoenix back in the second race in early March. Harvick is now almost a lock to make the Chase which has been expanded this year from 12 to 16 drivers.
