Playoff drivers Kevin Harvick and Erik Jones both exited Sunday’s South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway early in a Lap 147 incident.
Harvick had a tire go down in Turn 1 and when he made contact with the wall Jones had no time to react and collided into the back of Harvick’s No. 4 Ford.
“Well, there was something wrong from the time we put the tires on,” Harvick said. “It was like Russian roulette every time you put these piece of crap tires on and try to drive around the race track. One time it is tight, one time it is loose, one time they are blistered. We had a great car and then you put a set of tires on it and you can’t hardly make it through the field. I just hate it for everyone on our Mobil 1 Ford.”
Harvick, who led two times for 14 laps, brought 50 bonus points into the playoffs. He leaves Las Vegas fourth in points, 27 behind leader Martin Truex Jr.
Jones’ 38th-place finish snapped a streak of consecutive top 10s coming into the playoffs at three and dropped him to 15th in the standings.
“It’s just unfortunate – we didn’t have the best-handling DeWalt Camry today and thought we were going to end up okay,” said Jones, who started the race from the pole. “We were going to finish top-10 no matter what. It’s unfortunate we had that happen, nothing Kevin (Harvick) could do and nothing I could do unfortunately. Not the situation we needed to be in, we didn’t have any bonus points and we’ve got some work to do now.”
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