Harvick Punches Playoff Ticket With Michigan Victory

Harvick entered today's race at Michigan 96 points out of the playoffs. The former Cup champion punched his playoff ticket this afternoon by winning at a track that he knows like the back of his hand. This is the sixth career Michigan victory for Harvick, and his fifth in the last seven races on the 2-mile oval.

Today's victory also snapped the 65-race winless streak that Harvick has had on his shoulders for far too long. It is career win number 59 for the Stewart Haas Racing driver, as Ford collected their eight-straight win at Michigan.

“Just good timing for sure,” Harvick said. “We’ve had several good runs the last few weeks – Loudon and Pocono, where the car ran good and just didn’t have everything work out. I’m just really proud of everybody on our Busch Light Apple Ford Mustang; they’ve been digging all year long trying to make these Mustangs run faster. They haven’t been great this year, but our guys have done a good job in trying to take what we have, maximize it and do the things that we need to do. I’m just really proud of everybody at Stewart Haas Racing.”

The race was delayed by about an hour when rain fell around the area. For Harvick, it was well worth the wait.

“Everybody who doubted us doesn’t know us,” Harvick said. “They obviously know we thrive in these types of situations, and a lot of things went our way today, which we haven’t had all year long — things go our way and have things fall our way. At the end, we pitted and didn’t go a lap down, and then the caution came out and got control of the race. The thing I struggled with most today was traffic and restarts and just having to make up ground, but once I got clear track, that baby was hunting.”

Harvick elected to not come to pit road with 35 laps to go, and never looked back. Pole sitter Bubba Wallace tried to reel in the No. 4 Mustang but a bad restart left him with too much ground to cover. It was still a solid finish for the 23XI Racing driver, but another runner-up finish that left him with a bad taste in his mouth.

"I was just replaying everything I could have done differently," Wallace said about the restart. "I could've took the top on that restart. I thought I could hang with Harvick and just got to racing Larson and Logano. Just hate it. Hate it for our team. It sucks. All in all, an incredible weekend. I appreciate my team. Wish we could have gotten Toyota in victory lane. She was fast all weekend."

"It is a hell of a job for our team. So, there’s a lot of positive in this, but I’m a person that looks at the negative more than the positive. I need to change that, but I want to win so bad, and this was the best opportunity. I’ll wear this one on my heart for a while. I failed everybody."

The co-owner of Bubba's No. 23 Toyota, Denny Hamlin, also left Michigan with plenty of regret. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver won Stage 2 of the race and was set to start the final stage up front, but a penalty for too many crew members over the wall during his pit stop forced him to restart at the tail end of the field.

It’s just frustrating," Hamlin said. "We’ve had really fast cars throughout the year, but we can’t get a ‘W’ in the column. This is a piece of the puzzle that you’ve got to have to win races. Everyone has got to do their job to the best of their ability, and we’re just lacking in one little section of our team that we just can’t hem up."

"I’m not really sure how you fix it," Hamlin admits. "I just hope that we make strides and keep getting better. It’s just frustrating because when you have fast cars like we had this weekend, there’s just absolutely no excuse for not winning. We’re the ones that have to look each other in the face on Monday and figure out how we just keep doing this. Hopefully we can make it constructive and continue to get better, but obviously it’s disappointing."

Joey Logano finished 4th today with his Penske teammate Ryan Blaney rounding out the top-five. Finishing just behind him in 6th was Martin Truex Jr, as those two went toe-to-toe in the closing laps with so much on the line.

Harvick became the 15th different race winner through the 23 races this season, which ties the all-time record. That is exactly what Blaney and Truex did not want to see, as those two drivers battle for the final playoff spot with just three races remaining in the regular season.

Blaney now leads Truex by 19 points for the final playoff spot, which will be determined on points if there are no new winners in the next three races. Both drivers have been running consistently well all season, but they just haven't been able to come up with the much-needed race win. They are currently 2nd and 4th in the regular season standings.

While Blaney has the edge over Truex right now, the 2017 Cup champion may be the favorite in the next couple of races. Truex has won three times at Richmond, and led 80 laps in the race earlier this year. After that comes Watkins Glen, where Truex has finished 1st, 2nd, 2nd, and 3rd in the last four races there.

Kyle Larson was the top-finishing Chevrolet driver, coming home in 7th place despite getting a pit road speeding penalty. Erik Jones had another good result in 8th while Larson's teammate Alex Bowman got a much-needed 9th place finish. Ty Gibbs completed the top-ten today, in just his third career Cup start as he filled in once again for the recovering Kurt Busch. That was the feather in the cap for the 23XI Racing team.

It was a decent day for Hendrick Motorsports as Chase Elliott and William Byron put all four cars inside the top 12. The Dillon brothers, Austin and Ty, finished just behind them as RFK Racing teammates Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher followed them in 15th and 16th.

It was another rough afternoon for Ross Chastain, who continues to play the villain role. After a penalty for an uncontrolled tire on pit road, Chastain found himself battling with Christopher Bell on Lap 159 when it happened. The two made contact, sending the JGR driver into the outside wall. Bell, who won Stage 1, finished two spots behind Chastain in 26th.

The biggest moment of the race came on the Lap 25 restart after the competition caution. Nine drivers got mixed up when JJ Yeley got out of shape in the middle of the pack. Michael McDowell got into the back of him, which started a chain reaction involving Kyle Busch, Austin Cindric, and Aric Almirola among other drivers. Those three drivers all saw their day end early.

The end result was another DNF for Busch, and his seventh consecutive finish outside of the top-ten. “Just chaos ensued on the restart there and I don’t know what started it, but Almirola got spun in front of me, and then I got wedged between him and the wall,” Busch said. “When you get back there, things happen on restarts, especially when you have guys that stayed out. It was going to be a long run, then we all just crashed.”

Cindric took the hardest hit during the incident, but was thankfully cleared by the medical team. “That was not fun at all, and inside the driver’s head is certainly a lot less fun, too,” he said. “It feels like an absolute waste to come out here and just get completely wrecked. Just irresponsible, I guess, running in the middle of the pack and just really frustrating to be out of this race this early. Finish dead last and get no points.”

Three races remain before the playoffs begin. The series moves from the large Michigan Speedway to the smaller D-shaped oval of Richmond Raceway. Coverage for Sunday's Federated Auto Parts 400 begins at 3 ET on USA Network.