Kevin Harvick Snaps 65-Race Winless Streak to win at Michigan

After almost two years and 65 races of being absent from Victory Lane, Kevin Harvick finally got the checkered flag for his 59^th career Cup Series win at Michigan. The win, his first since September 2020 at Bristol, pushed him from being an outsider to locking himself into the NASCAR Playoffs. Harvick also becomes the 15^th different winner of the season, with three races to go in the regular season. Before the race, Harvick only led 13 laps all season. With Harvick’s win, this leaves the final spot to fight upon between two drivers that were in the top five in points, Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr.

“Everybody who doubted us doesn’t know us,” said Harvick after the race. “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 — have things go our way and have things fall our way.”

“And then there at the end we pitted, didn’t go a lap down, and the caution came out, got control of the race. That’s the thing I struggled with the most today was traffic and the restarts and just having to make up ground. Once I got clear track, that baby was hunting.”

Harvick had everything lined up for him to win after a caution came out when Ross Chastain and Christopher Bell collided with each other coming off turn four. With 21 laps left in the race, Harvick went out to a four-second lead over Joey Logano and Bubba Wallace. Wallace, the pole-sitter, raced Logano hard and was able to get around him to finish second, just 2.9 seconds back of the eventual winner Harvick. Wallace led twice in the race for 22 laps in his No. 23 McDonald’s Toyota and despite the runner-up finish, he felt lamented about it afterward.

“Just replaying everything I could have done,” said Wallace. “Took the top there on the restart. Thought I could hang with the 4 (Harvick), and just got to racing the 5 (Kyle Larson) and the 22 (Logano). And 22 did a good job of getting another Ford contract, helping a Ford win.”

“Just all in all an incredible weekend. Appreciate my team. Wished we could have got Toyota in Victory Lane. Wish we got (sponsor) McDonald’s back in victory lane. She was fast all week, man. Just I’ll wear this one on my heart for a while. I failed everybody.”

Denny Hamlin had arguably one of the fastest cars of the race and rebounded from a pit road penalty for too many men over the wall on the final pit stop on lap 160. After restarting 22^nd, he pushed his way through to finish third behind the car he co-owns. When asked about how dejected Bubba felt, he did talk to Bubba after the race.

“Just a great job all weekend,” Hamlin said. “He did a great job and Ty (Gibbs) did a great job- that whole 23XI team just did a phenomenal job from beginning to end. Obviously a rocket fast car and- this was a well put together weekend for all of them and it’s Dave Rogers, it’s Mike Wheeler, it’s Billy Scott helping set up both of these cars, there’s just a lot of pieces to this puzzle that those guys are starting to do right and have good results.”

Ty Gibbs, who has been subbing for Kurt Busch for the third race in a row, finished 10^th, earning his first Cup Series top ten in his third start. Gibbs won the Xfinity race just the day before.

Christopher Bell won the first stage and Denny Hamlin took the second stage. The final stage featured an intense battle for the lead between Harvick, Logano, Bell, Wallace, Chastain, and Daniel Suarez. Several big named drivers were taken out in a wreck on lap 25, when J.J. Yeley, driving the No. 15 Ford for Rick Ware Racing, restarted in tenth, and as they went into turn one, Yeley lost control of his car in the middle of traffic, causing a pileup that took out many contenders, especially Ford drivers like Austin Cindric who had a hard hit into the turn one wall. Kyle Busch, Aric Almirola, Todd Gilliland, and Harrison Burton were among the drivers also involved in the nine-car pileup.

The NASCAR Cup Series heads to the short track of Richmond Raceway on Sunday, August 14^th at 3:00 PM EST on USA, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Denny Hamlin won the spring race there earlier this season.