It’s not always the fastest car on the track that wins a race in NASCAR, but that was the case in Saturday’s Sam’s Town 300 Nationwide Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Kevin Harvick passed Denny Hamlin for the lead with 25 laps left and drove away to a 1.361-second win over the Joe Gibbs Racing driver.
“Those four tires got us there at the end. We were coming there to (Harvick) at the end. We didn’t have the best car all day,’’ said Hamlin. “I felt like we had the best car at the beginning of the race but we didn’t have the track position to go with it. Once we had the track position it took off but then those new tires got us there at the end.’‘
Harvick scored his first win of the season and the 35th of his career, second all-time in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series. All Headline News
NASCAR Nationwide Series: Sam’s Town 300 at Las Vegas - Race Results
“The car was really fast, but we definitely got some work to do on pit road,” Harvick said.
Harvick had a difficult time keeping his composure following the two bad stops when he radioed back to the crew his displeasure.
“I get mad, and they know how I am and what I expect of them,” he said. “I learned a long time ago that you can only gripe about for so long, then you got to go back to driving the car.”
Hamlin finished second, while Carl Edwards, Brad Keselowski and Brian Vickers completed the top-five. Edwards holds a 41-point lead over Keselowski, as the series takes a two-week break before returning to action on March 20 at Bristol.
Trevor Bayne, Justin Allgaier, Paul Menard, Greg Biffle, who won last year’s race at Las Vegas, and Steve Wallace finished sixth through 10th, respectively. MiamiHerald.com
Kyle Busch led 43 laps and was chasing Harvick and Hamlin during the final 25-lap green-flag run before contact with the wall in Turn 2 slowed his progress and dropped him to 16th at the finish. Busch, however, had the strongest car at the midpoint of the 200-lap race and led Vickers by 3.537 seconds when NASCAR yellow-flagged the race for the fourth time on Lap 104 because of a light rain shower.
That caution came 21 laps after Patrick’s No. 7 Chevrolet slammed into the outside wall, thanks to contact from Michael McDowell’s Dodge. Patrick, who pitted for fuel on Lap 17 and ran as high as third during a cycle of green-flag stops, had returned to the track with fresh tires and was closing quickly on McDowell, who was logging laps after blowing a tire and hitting the wall on Lap 16.
As Patrick ducked to the inside to make the pass, McDowell turned down and took away her line.
“Holy [expletive]! He [expletive] turned down,” Patrick fumed on the radio right after the wreck. “He’s got a broken rear bumper, and he’s [expletive] trying to race!” NASCAR
Patrick, who had climbed as high as third earlier in the race, was livid on the radio and uttered a few profanities immediately after the accident. She finally asked crew chief Tony Eury Jr. where to take her battered car. The hood folded like an accordion, she complained she couldn’t even see where she was going.
“It’s gonna be all right, babe,” Eury told her.
“I can barely see,” she replied. Augusta Chronicle
She blamed McDowell for turning down the track and causing the crash. “We had a good car, we really did,” Patrick said. “Unfortunately, we got caught in a bad situation with a driver who wasn’t looking and a spotter who wasn’t calling.”
McDowell said the wreck was “100 percent my fault. She was coming up on new tires and the closing rate was so fast. I closed the door.”
The start of the race was delayed 1:35 because of wet weather, and showers slowed the field under caution five laps after the halfway point. At that point, Busch had a 3.2-second lead over Vickers.
After a brief delay, green-flag racing returned five laps later. FOXNews
| 
|