The move was wild, hardly sensible, a one-man melee entirely in keeping with Kevin Harvick’s bad-boy image.
“It was a pretty stupid move, in my opinion,” said Jeff Gordon, who finished second to Harvick in Sunday’s Tropicana 400. “It won the race for him.”
“Maybe,” Harvick countered, “if he’d been a little braver, he’d have won. He thought it was stupid. I thought it was pretty cool.”
It happened well before the finish, with 69 of the 267 laps left at Chicagoland Speedway. But it set up Harvick to inherit the lead later, with Gordon as his only pursuer at the end.
Harvick’s wild ride began when he dropped his Chevrolet to the track apron for a banzai charge. He drove inside fourth-place Kurt Busch, who was trying to work inside the lapped car of Dave Blaney.
That made it three wide on a track where two cars abreast can be plenty precarious. His car already wriggling, Harvick tried to slip back up onto the banking in Turn 1, and that started the Chevy seriously swerving.
By Turn 2, he’d spun out. His charge for the lead had failed.
For the moment.
Harvick amazingly hadn’t hit anyone else. But behind him, cars swerved and slowed trying to avoid him, and Elliott Sadler spun, bringing out a caution flag.
Then came the strategic move: Harvick pitted under that caution and took on enough fuel to finish the race. The front-runners, loath to lose positions on a track where passing was so difficult, all stayed out on the track to hold their places in line.
But that meant they couldn’t finish without pitting for gas.
Harvick’s crew “kept preaching to me on the radio, `You don’t have to race the guys in front of you! Save gas! Save gas!'” he said. The crewmen meant all he had to do was bide his time and wait for the others to pit.
When the final caution came out, with 27 laps to go, those in front of Harvick all indeed fell away, into the pits, leaving him in the lead as he followed the pace car.
Only Gordon, who also had enough gas to finish, stayed out, with his Chevy tucked on Harvick’s bumper.
When the race went green for keeps with 20 laps remaining, Gordon made one strong run at Harvick, saw it was futile and settled in to ride second the rest of the way.
“I was on him on the restart,” Gordon said. “I was going to try to get under him, but my car started pushing [understeering].
“It’s just aero push–you know what that is,” Gordon said, repeating drivers’ chronic complaint about current-model NASCAR cars on intermediate-size tracks such as Chicagoland.
When one car runs up close behind another, the lead car takes the air stream off the front of the second car. That drastically reduces front-end traction and makes the second car extremely difficult to turn.
“You have no idea how frustrating that is,” Gordon said. “You’re sitting there running wide open, cranking on the steering wheel, and the thing keeps pushing [refusing to turn].”
And so “unless Kevin made a mistake, there was no way I was going to pass him,” Gordon said.
Harvick drove those last laps smoothly and broke a yearlong slump. His last Winston Cup win was the inaugural race at Chicagoland last year.
“We’re just glad to defend anything at this point,” Harvick said of his race title.
Since last July not only had he slumped badly, but had gotten himself into trouble with other drivers and NASCAR officials.
In March he’d been placed on probation for a confrontation with Greg Biffle following a Busch Series race at Bristol, Tenn. Then in April, NASCAR cited him for intentionally wrecking Coy Gibbs in a Craftsman Truck series race at Martinsville, Va.
For that, he was forced to sit out the entire Cup race at Martinsville the following day–the first modern-era NASCAR driver to be handed such a severe penalty.
“You can’t retaliate with your vehicle as a weapon–that’s what I learned from Martinsville,” he said. “But I’ve said all along I’m not going to change my driving style.”
Though Gordon questioned the wisdom of Sunday’s move, he conceded it was legal.
“When they’ve stated in drivers meeting that it’s not out of bounds down there [on the apron], there’s not anything they can do,” Gordon said of officials.
“Kevin saw an opportunity, he’s aggressive, and he went for it,” Gordon said. “And it did win the race for him.”
“Race drivers have to be bold to win today,” said Harvick’s car owner, Richard Childress. “Kevin knew what he was doing. And I have seen Jeff Gordon make some of the same type moves, and end up winning races.”
Tropicana 400 results
At Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet;
Lap length: 1.5 miles (Starting position)
%% DRIVER CAR LAPS MONEY
1. (32) Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 267 $200,028
2. (15) Jeff Gordon Chevrolet 267 $180,268
3. (6) Tony Stewart Pontiac 267 $153,928
4. (37) Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet 267 $88,175
5. (1) Ryan Newman Ford 267 $115,725
6. (2) Kurt Busch Ford 267 $85,000
7. (3) Bill Elliott Dodge 267 $95,556
8. (21) Robby Gordon Chevrolet 267 $93,956
9. (13) Mark Martin Ford 267 $100,133
10. (9) Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet 267 $102,437
11. (11) Dale Jarrett Ford 267 $109,878
12. (33) Jeff Green Chevrolet 267 $59,100
13. (24) Terry Labonte Chevrolet 267 $91,033
14. (16) Matt Kenseth Ford 267 $75,800
15. (40) Bobby Hamilton Chevrolet 267 $88,100
16. (4) Sterling Marlin Dodge 266 $100,867
17. (7) Dave Blaney Ford 266 $82,200
18. (12) Bobby Labonte Pontiac 266 $102,778
19. (38) Ricky Rudd Ford 266 $101,217
20. (25) Ricky Craven Ford 266 $71,850
21. (19) Elliott Sadler Ford 266 $78,600
22. (30) John Andretti Dodge 266 $86,883
23. (17) Mike Skinner Chevrolet 266 $67,889
24. (35) Kyle Petty Dodge 266 $55,800
25. (8) Rusty Wallace Ford 266 $99,850
26. (14) Todd Bodine Ford 265 $84,387
27. (22) Steve Park Chevrolet 265 $88,375
28. (41) Casey Atwood Dodge 264 $58,200
29. (28) Kenny Wallace Chevrolet 263 $54,800
30. (23) Brett Bodine Ford 262 $58,200
31. (42) Steve Grissom Dodge 262 $54,900
32. (39) Jimmy Spencer Dodge 239 $57,700
DRIVER CAR LAPS OUT MONEY
33. (10) Joe Nemechek Chevrolet 237 Crash $65,500
34. (20) Jeremy Mayfield Dodge 234 — $64,800
35. (43) Stacy Compton Pontiac 230 Engine $54,050
36. (29) Hut Stricklin Dodge 218 Crash $61,800
37. (34) Jerry Nadeau Chevrolet 217 Steering $53,600
38. (36) Mike Wallace Pontiac 172 Engine $80,150
39. (18) Jeff Burton Ford 167 Engine $97,867
40. (27) Ken Schrader Pontiac 151 Engine $61,000
41. (31) Ward Burton Dodge 137 Handling $95,800
42. (5) Michael Waltrip Chevrolet 136 Engine $60,600
43. (26) Stuart Kirby Ford 124 Rear end $52,403
%%
Average winner’s speed: 136.832 m.p.h.
Time of race: 2 hours 55 minutes 37 seconds.
Margin of victory: 0.812.
Caution flags: 7 for 35 laps.
Lead changes: 19 among 11 drivers.
Lap leaders: Newman 1-56; Earnhardt Jr. 57-64; Waltrip 65; Sadler 66-67; Johnson 68-69; Harvick 70-71; Martin 72-83; Stewart 84-115; Jarrett 116-124; Earnhardt Jr. 125-131; Sadler 132-134; Harvick 135-136; Green 137-138; Martin 139; Earnhardt Jr. 140-184; Kenseth 185-187; Earnhardt Jr. 188-208; Newman 209-239; Stewart 240-242; Harvick 243-267.
Winston Cup points: 1. Marlin, 2,483; 2. Martin, 2,434; 3. Johnson, 2,394; 4. J. Gordon, 2,388; 5. Stewart, 2,326; 6. Wallace, 2,312; 7. Rudd, 2,274; 8. Elliott, 2,230; 9. Busch, 2,223; 10. Kenseth, 2,219; 11. Jarrett, 2,114; 12. Newman, 2,033; 13. Craven, 2,032; 14. Earnhardt Jr., 2,020; 15. Waltrip, 2,020; 16. J. Burton, 2,000; 17. T. Labonte, 1,927; 18. Petty, 1,871; 19. Blaney, 1,863; 20. Sadler, 1,818. Tropicana 400 results
