In the fastest Busch Series race in the history of Texas Motor Speedway, Kevin Harvick’s No. 21 Chevrolet ran out of gas right as he crossed the finish line first at Saturday’s O’Reilly Challenge.
The win is Harvick’s third Busch win at Texas Motor Speedway 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.
“Its 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.
Burton, Harvick’s teammate, finished third and said while his car got better gas mileage, it was very hard to pass cars
“It’s very difficult to pass here. We had a really fast car, and I saw Harvick too, he’d get to people and have a really difficult time getting by them,” Burton said.
Burton added the cool temperatures at the track kept the high grove from opening up and letting drivers use that part of the track to pass.
“The grip level today was unbelievable, and typically when you have that much grip, the bottom is going to be the way to go,” Burton said.
Harvick’s win leaves him tied for the most wins at TMS, a record he now shares with race pole sitter Mark Martin.
Harvick led three times in the race for a total of 145 laps of the 200-lap event. He goes into Sunday’s Dickies 500 sixth in points with a chance to be the first driver to win both the Busch and NEXTEL Cup Series championships in the same season. 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.”
