HAMPTON, Ga. – Kevin Harvick wasn’t about to lose another Nationwide Series race late in the going at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
After dominating this same race last season only to be passed by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. on the last lap, Harvick again dominated the Great Clips / Grit Chips 300 but held off a furious charge from Kyle Busch over the last seven laps. Harvick led 132 laps on his way to his first NNS win of the season, 40th of his career.
“We were definitely too tight, just had to change my approach there a little bit at the end, knew Kyle was going to go for it but it’s fun racing with him,” said Harvick in Victory Lane.
“That’s two years in a row that we’ve had a dominant car and you think something’s going to go wrong, we just kept digging and these guys did a great job all weekend. Brought the same stuff we had last year and it worked again.”
Busch led the first 57 laps after winning his seventh pole of the season. Harvick however, was the class of the field and once he drove to the lead he quickly established control of the event. Just four cautions on the night helped him stretch his lead over the likes of Busch, Joey Logano and teammate Austin Dillon.
Dillon, who entered the day six points behind championship leader Sam Hornish Jr., ran behind Harvick throughout the middle portion of the race but his downfall were restarts. On the final one, which set up the seven lap shootout, Dillon and those behind him in the outside lane lost all their track position when Logano spun his tires.
Dillon finished the night eighth as Hornish drove to third and extended his point lead to 10 with nine races remaining.
“Our Alliance Truck Parts Ford Mustang was pretty good over the long run, but what happened is every time we got a long ways throughout the run we’d get kind of stuck behind some people and the car would free up a little bit,” said Hornish who finished in the top three for the fourth time in the last five weeks.
“We made some good adjustments to be able to make the car better and I had a direction that I wanted to go and Greg [Erwin, crew chief] had a direction he wanted to go and we put them both together and we were able to get a good restart and get our way up to third, so I’m real happy with the performance that we put out tonight.”
For as dominant as Harvick was however, it didn’t come without a potential problem. Leading with 31 laps to go he thought he had a loose wheel but decided to stay on track unless it became too much to handle. Logano, running second at the time, began to close the lead before the final caution and subsequent pit stop changed the complexion of the race.
“We had an okay car today. It was good the first run, really, really loose the second run,” said Busch on his runner-up finish, which included tagging the wall just past halfway.
“It was about a third-place car. I was going to run behind the 33 and the 22, but for the last restart with seven to go, we even made changes to free up our car and it just wasn’t enough.”
Kasey Kahne rebounded from a lap 44 spin to finish fourth with Kyle Larson coming home fifth. Larson was the highest finishing rookie but was he and teammate Nelson Piquet Jr.’s car failed post race inspection for being too low in the front end.
