Kevin Harvick snaps drought with Michigan win

In 2020, Kevin Harvick lit up the NASCAR Cup Series with a nine-win season that included a sweep of a Michigan International Speedway doubleheader. Nearly two years later, he returned to Victory Lane for the first time after an agonising sixty-five-race winless drought.

After Ross Chastain continued to antagonise everyone in the garage by tapping Christopher Bell and sending him into the wall with forty laps remaining, Harvick held off pole winner Bubba Wallace on the ensuing restart after electing to stay out over pitting. He maintained a steady pace over Wallace and would win by nearly three seconds. It is his sixth Cup victory at Michigan.

“The last restart, I had the #5 (Kyle Larson) behind me, and I knew I didn’t need to let the #23 up,” Harvick recalled in his post-race press conference. “I knew I needed to drive it in the corner far enough, but the #5 had given me such a good push. I had a car length, and I think Bubba got about up to my door. I knew that if we could just get off of turn two, we would have a chance.

“Then they were side-by-side, and then we drove down into turn one and two the next lap, and I watched them. I don’t know what happened. They all wound up all goofed up down there and up the racetrack. I was hoping that the #23 didn’t cycle out to be the second car because then we were going to have a pretty constant race on our hands, but the more they race, the further we got away.

“That’s what you want, right? To try to get away so they don’t have a draft and can make up that time quicker. #5 launched good, #5 gave us a good push, and the key was just clearing the #23 off of two and being able to go down the back straight-away by myself and not door to door and in a firestorm. That all went smooth.”

Daniel Suárez‘s left-front tyre went down with less than five laps to go, which raised some speculation about NASCAR potentially waving the caution flag to bunch the field back up for overtime, though it never came. Harvick noted such fears never came to him as he “didn’t even know [Suárez] had a problem.”

With no caution, Wallace was not able to close the gap to Harvick and settled for second. He led twenty-three laps following becoming the first black Cup pole sitter in sixty years and is riding a seven-race streak of top tens.

“I’ll wear this one on my heart for a while. I failed everybody,” Wallace told NBC after the race. “[…] It is a hell of a job for our team. There’s a lot of positives in this, but I’m a person that looks at the negatives more than the positives. I need to change that, but I want to win so bad, and this was the best opportunity.”

While Chastain might be the main character of NASCAR discourse yet again, the biggest wreck came just a lap after the lap 22 competition caution when J.J. Yeley got loose while racing Michael McDowell in a pack, triggering a nine-car accident that shot Austin Cindric into the outside wall.

“That was not fun at all and inside the driver’s head is certainly a lot less fun too,” commented Cindric. “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. It’s not exactly what we needed from today. I just wish we would have been able to get some more laps today. […] It’s just a byproduct of a crazy restart with 300 miles left in the race.”

“It is incredibly frustrating because you can think of 100 things you can do to prevent that, but it’s not in your DNA to just back off and just not run close to the pack on the restart, but I think if you remove a few cars from that equation, that doesn’t happen.”

Wallace’s team-mate Ty Gibbs, serving as Kurt Busch‘s injury replacement for the third straight race, scored his maiden Cup Series top ten by finishing tenth. He won the Xfinity Series race the previous day.

Race results

Finish	Start	Number	Driver	Team	Manufacturer	Laps	Status
1	16	4	Kevin Harvick	Stewart-Haas Racing	Ford	200	Running
2	1	23	Bubba Wallace	23XI Racing	Toyota	200	Running
3	9	11	Denny Hamlin	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	200	Running
4	4	22	Joey Logano	Team Penske	Ford	200	Running
5	24	12	Ryan Blaney	Team Penske	Ford	200	Running
6	7	19	Martin Truex Jr.	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	200	Running
7	8	5	Kyle Larson	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	200	Running
8	10	43	Erik Jones	Petty GMS Motorsports	Chevrolet	200	Running
9	30	48	Alex Bowman	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	200	Running
10	11	45	Ty Gibbs*	23XI Racing	Toyota	200	Running
11	13	9	Chase Elliott	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	200	Running
12	20	24	William Byron	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	200	Running
13	26	3	Austin Dillon	Richard Childress Racing	Chevrolet	200	Running
14	25	42	Ty Dillon	Petty GMS Motorsports	Chevrolet	200	Running
15	33	6	Brad Keselowski	RFK Racing	Ford	200	Running
16	19	17	Chris Buescher	RFK Racing	Ford	200	Running
17	21	31	Justin Haley	Kaulig Racing	Chevrolet	200	Running
18	31	33	Austin Hill*	Richard Childress Racing	Chevrolet	200	Running
19	32	7	Corey LaJoie	Spire Motorsports	Chevrolet	200	Running
20	23	14	Chase Briscoe	Stewart-Haas Racing	Ford	200	Running
21	35	77	Josh Bilicki*	Spire Motorsports	Chevrolet	200	Running
22	34	51	Cody Ware	Rick Ware Racing	Ford	200	Running
23	36	78	B.J. McLeod*	Live Fast Motorsports	Ford	199	Running
24	22	1	Ross Chastain	Trackhouse Racing Team	Chevrolet	199	Running
25	15	99	Daniel Suárez	Trackhouse Racing Team	Chevrolet	198	Running
26	2	20	Christopher Bell	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	193	Accident
27	37	38	Todd Gilliland	Front Row Motorsports	Ford	188	Running
28	14	34	Michael McDowell	Front Row Motorsports	Ford	187	Running
29	6	8	Tyler Reddick	Richard Childress Racing	Chevrolet	110	Engine
30	12	16	Noah Gragson*	Kaulig Racing	Chevrolet	109	Accident
31	17	41	Cole Custer	Stewart-Haas Racing	Ford	94	Accident
32	27	21	Harrison Burton	Wood Brothers Racing	Ford	29	Accident
33	28	47	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	JTG Daugherty Racing	Chevrolet	25	Accident
34	18	10	Aric Almirola	Stewart-Haas Racing	Ford	25	Accident
35	29	15	J.J. Yeley*	Rick Ware Racing	Ford	24	Accident
36	3	18	Kyle Busch	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	24	Accident
37	5	2	Austin Cindric	Team Penske	Ford	24	Accident

Italics – Competing for Rookie of the Year
* – Ineligible for points