With chaos happening all the way around them, Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick both were able to avoid the chaos, bringing home solid finishes with Truex in sixth and Harvick in eighth. More importantly, they have themselves above the cut line, nine points for Truex and seven points for Harvick, heading into the second race of the third round of the Chase Championship.
For Truex, he fought with the car all day but worked his way into the top-10 during the later stages of the race.
“Our car was just really fast on short runs and really terrible on long runs, all day,” he commented. “We really fought it all day long. We just couldn’t keep the tires on it on long runs. It was frustrating at times, but we battled hard and did what we had to do today. We probably would have finished fourth or fifth without that last caution.”
Truex added that he approves of the run as he felt that they did “what they needed to do” as Martinsville is definitely his worst track of the three races in the third round. Truex has nine top-10s at Texas, including a ninth in the spring, to go with seven top-10s at Phoenix including a seventh in February.
For Harvick, he was running up in the top-five through the race but made contact with his teammate Kurt Busch coming off pit road with 87 laps to go after slowing down to try and avoid starting on the outside for the restart. Harvick would then make a second trip down pit road under the next caution with 73 laps to go to fix the damage. He then worked his way back up through the field to finish eighth.
“This Outback, Jimmy John’s, Budweiser Chevy ran really well today,” Harvick commented. “We got run into there, coming out of the pits and I couldn’t really tell how bad it was. But Rodney (Childers, crew chief), I could tell the panic in his voice. And luckily, the caution came out because I saw the smoke coming out of the left front tire. But, it was a good call to come back in. We were able to get a couple of good restarts there; and then with the front smashed in, and everything happening, it was just way too tight back there in traffic. But all in all, it was a good day with a lot of chaotic things doing on, on the race track, So, we just needed to finish that one where we were running; not having a chance to win, we just needed to capitalize on some other peoples’ bad day.”
Harvick feels moving forward that his chances are good, based on past success at Texas Motor Speedway and Phoenix International Raceway. He has finished runner-up in his past two race at Texas and has won the last four straight races at Phoenix.
“I feel like Texas has been a very good race track for us as we’ve gone through the past couple of years at Stewart-Haas, and we all know how Phoenix has gone,” Harvick said. “So, we just need to have two more solid weeks and hopefully position ourselves well to have a chance to get to Homestead.”
