Race Results | Photos | Standings
Kevin Harvick dominated Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for his second consecutive win of the season.
Harvick led a race-high 214 laps on his way to the Stewart-Haas Racing driver’s 39th career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win. It was also Harvick’s 100th victory across NASCAR’s top tiers (Read More).
“Just really proud of everybody on our Jimmy John’s/Busch Ford for just doing a great job with the racecars,” Harvick said. “These last two weeks we’ve just hit on what we needed to, and really this stems back to last year when the mile-and-a-half program got so much better at the end of the year, and they’ve done their homework on a number of things.”
In his last four races on 1.5-mile tracks, dating back to the 2017 campaign, Harvick has three wins and has finished no worse than fourth.
Kyle Busch, Kyle Larson, Martin Truex Jr. and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five.
Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Erik Jones, Paul Menard and Aric Almirola completed the first 10 finishers.
Harvick also swept the first two stages of Sunday’s race.
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series now heads to ISM Raceway in Phoenix next Sunday.
How Harvick Won: He kicked everyone’s tail that’s how. Leading 214 laps, Harvick really was never challenged on Sunday and is showing great prowess in the early going of 2018 particularly on 1.5-mile tracks with two straight wins. Harvick took the lead for good with 40 laps to go on green flag pit stops and was off to the checkered flag.
Who Had a Good Day: Outside of Harvick the Ford camp had a day to celebrate for the second straight week with six in the top-10…Larson has top 10 finishes in three of the last four Las Vegas races…Truex Jr. scored his 13th straight top-10 finish on a 1.5 mile track…Keselowski had his sixth straight top-10 finish at Las Vegas.
Who Had a Bad Day: Jimmie Johnson had his car chief Jessie Saunders ejected before the race after his car failed inspection three times Sunday morning. Johnson had to start last in the field and battled an ill handling car all day falling laps behind at one point…Michael McDowell qualified 15th and was having a solid outing until a mechanical issue took out the Front Row Motorsports driver…Jamie McMurray slammed the wall just after the start of the day’s final stage. He was eliminated from the race with severe damage to his Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet…Kurt Busch and Chase Elliott collided with each other before making heavy contact with wall destroying both their cars on lap 183 (Read More).
What Else Happened: It was a pretty tame race for the most part due to Harvick’s dominating run. The track surface did cause some tire wear and forced pit strategy and management. Some drivers had issues like McMurray, Kurt Busch and Chase Elliott but the caution flag was not used much on Sunday.
Quotable: “Winning 100 races is something that I never thought I would do” – Kevin Harvick
Notable: Harvick has led 395 laps this season (49%)…He is the first to lead the most laps and win in consecutive races since Carl Edwards in 2016…Cole Custer finished 25th in his Cup Series debut
