Chevrolet pulled off a weekend sweep at Texas Motor Speedway in three races at the track. Tony Stewart won the Dickies 500, Kevin Harvick won the O’Reilly Challenge and Clint Bowyer won the Silverado 350k.Stewart rains on Chasers’ paradeAfter the clouds went away, Tony Stewart was all sunshine after dominating a rain-delayed Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway Sunday.
“In the 27 years I’ve been racing, I can count on two hands the amount of times I’ve had a car that was this good all day long from start to finish,” Stewart said.
Stewart led 278 of the 339 laps and held Jimmie Johnson off on a green-white-checker finish giving him his third win in the past six races.
Johnson leaves TMS with a 17 point lead over Matt Kenseth, who started the race 36th, but finished 12th.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. started 10th, but after a brush with the wall, was relegated to 34th. After making repairs during six pit stops, the No. 8 Chevrolet finished sixth.
Toward the end of the race, Kasey Kahne looked like the only driver who had anything for Stewart but during a caution on lap 327, Kahne’s engine blew and he was retired to the garage.
Teammate Scott Riggs came in second after the caution, but sitting in third place, Kevin Harvick turned him into the wall.
“He was blocking all over the place and wound up on the bottom and I got a good run on the top. He got loose and I got into the back of him and spun him out,” said Harvick.
After the race there was an altercation between crew members of Riggs’ team and Harvick’s wife, DeLana.
“Those guys [No. 10 crew] decided they wanted to take matters into their own hands and trip my wife in front of their pit box and ran her over,” Harvick said. “That’s a little bit unnecessary, so we’re not too happy about that.”
Riggs’ Team Director, Rodney Childers, downplayed the incident.
“We’re working with NASCAR right now to figure out exactly what happened out there,” he said. “There are always different sides to the story, and we’ll work with them to find out what the truth is.”
DeLana Harvick spent time in the infield care center after the incident.
The 12 cautions of Sunday’s race also tie the 2000 TMS race for most cautions at the track.
The race was two-time Cup champion Terry Labonte’s 854th and final of his career. His accomplishments were honored during the pre-race ceremonies.Harvick gets ninth winIn the fastest Busch Series race in the history of TMS, Harvick’s No. 21 Chevrolet ran out of gas right as he crossed the finish line first at the O’Reilly Challenge.
The win is Harvick’s third Busch win at TMS and his ninth series win of the season, where he clinched the series championship three weeks ago.
“After the first pit stop we made some pretty big tire air pressure adjustments and from that point on we were just a little bit here, a little bit there on the air pressure,” Harvick said. “Shane [Wilson, crew chief] told me from the beginning that the gas was really close and every chance I got I needed to save gas. So I saved as much as I could and once I saw the 19 [Tony Stewart] get in my mirror I knew I had to just keep him as far back as possible.”
Stewart would end up second after making a late race charge to overcome Harvick, but while he was fast, he struggled to pass lapped cars.
“It’s fun when you get three of us like Jeff [Burton] and Kevin [Harvick] and myself that had three cars that are just so even that you’re nitpicking trying things, little things, to find spots on the racetrack,” Stewart said.
Harvick led three times in the race for a total of 145 laps of the 200 lap event. His ninth win also puts him just one win away from tying Sam Ard’s 1983 record of 10 wins in a season.
“It would be a pretty cool record,” Harvick said. “That’s about as big as Mark Martin’s 47 wins, that’s about as big as it gets in our series.”Bower gets truck winsA green-white-checker finish couldn’t keep Clint Bowyer from Victory Lane Friday.
Bowyer started from the pole in only his third career Craftsman Truck Series start and led 103 of 148 laps. Mike Sinner led the remaining 45.
The two exchanged the lead throughout the race, and the battle came to a head on lap 115 when Bowyer dropped to the bottom of the track on the front stretch to block Skinner, who dove into the grass to avoid making contact with Bowyer.
“He was pushing me pretty hard for a couple of laps, but I wasn’t going to give him the bottom,” Bowyer said. “I left him plenty of real estate on the outside. I guess the grass was a better option.”
Skinner was not pleased with the move, and said it was too early in the race for that kind of action.
“It’s something that you do with five laps to go, 10 laps to go,” said Skinner, “He was driving like a guy who knew he didn’t have the best truck.”
“I’m sure he was frustrated,” said Bowyer.” But there was six inches on the bottom and 60 feet on the top.”
Skinner would finished in third place, clinching Toyota’s first manufacturer’s championship in its third year of NASCAR racing.
“To clinch the manufacturer’s championship for Toyota is an honor,” said Skinner, who added he just signed a three-year contract extension to continue racing in the truck series for Bill Davis Racing.
“They have made a home for me over here at Bill Davis driving the Toyota Tundra and I feel we can be competitive in the Craftsman Truck Series,” Skinner said.
“I’d much rather make a fourth of the money here and have fun doing what I love to do for a living than go make the big money over there [Cup Series] and run 35th every week,” he said.
