Harvick: “These championships aren’t like winning like Petty and Earnhardt used to win them.”
Kevin Harvick has won 9 of the 35 NASCAR Cup Series races in 2020. It been a season of domination.
Heading into Martinsville, Harvick was 42 points above the cut line. However, when the green flag dropped, Harvick struggled with the handling, running 30th or worse.
Harvick failed to collect stage points in stage one and stage two. A cut tire sent him to the pit lane under green. A caution followed a lap latter, saving Harvick from going 2 laps down.
With 5 laps to go, Harvick sat just 1 point below the cut line. Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski were tied, 1 point ahead of Harvick. If Harvick would have passed one more car, three cars would have been tied, at the cut line.
In stage three, Harvick was given the free pass as the first car one lap down. On the final lap, Harvick was running 10th and on the bumper of Kyle Busch for 9th.
Off turn four, Harvick made a desperate attempt to make the championship. He turned Kyle Busch. However, Harvick wrecked himself in the process and parked it against the inside wall, just a few hundred feet of the finish line.
Despite 5 wins in the last 15 races, Harvick will not run for a championship at Phoenix Raceway.
Related: NASCAR Playoff Points after Martinsville Speedway (November 2020)
Kevin Harvick on missing the Championship 4
“These championships aren’t like winning like Petty and Earnhardt used to win them,” Harvick told NBC Sports after the race.
“You have to put them together three weeks at a time. It comes down to one race, and it came down to one race for us tonight. We came up short,” he said.
Harvick added in the media center, “We had a great year. Like I said earlier, they aren’t won the same way Earnhardt and Petty did. You have to put together a few weeks and we didn’t put together these last few weeks like we needed to and came up short.”
Kevin Harvick spins Kyle Busch
Martinsville Speedway
Links
Kevin Harvick | Kyle Busch | Martinsville Speedway | Phoenix Raceway | NASCAR
