Harvick takes NCTS win as title race tightens

Top four drivers separated by 39 points heading to finale

Kevin Harvick, stuck in heavy traffic, barely held off a charging Ted Musgrave to win Friday's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Silverado 150 at Phoenix International Raceway.

	Harvick led four times for 80 laps Friday at Phoenix. Credit: Autostock

Harvick, the leader from Lap 102, held a .93-second lead over Bud Pole winner Musgrave when the latter cleared Brendan Gaughan for the runner-up spot on Lap 139 of 150. The gap closed significantly over the final two laps around the one-mile speedway and evaporated on the final serial as Harvick couldn't immediately clear fellow NASCAR Winston Cup Series driver Ken Schrader.

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Musgrave nearly caught both trucks but came up .212 second -- about a length and a half -- short of victory. The pair finished in the same positions a year ago.

Harvick, one of four drivers to take the lead, led the most laps -- 80 -- and won $41,315. He averaged a near-record 107.527 mph.

"I'm really happy to win and I'm really happy that I didn't do anything to mess up the points race," said Harvick, who led 80 of the 150 laps -- including the final 49 -- on the 1-mile oval, .

Losing to Harvick -- a Winston Cup regular making only his sixth truck series of the season -- by about two car-lengths cost Musgrave five points.

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"Last year, Kevin won it and I was second, and this year, same result," Musgrave said. "But that was a lot of fun. We came across the finish line side-by-side a bunch of times.

"We talked before the race and I said, 'Let's race really, really hard and really clean.' That's what we did."

Dennis Setzer finished third to record his 19th consecutive top-10 finish, matching Ron Hornaday Jr.'s single-season mark set in 1996.

	Brendan Gaughan's No. 62 Dodge had trouble with 10 laps to go. Credit: Autostock

Rookie leader Carl Edwards took fourth, despite a late brush with the wall in his battle to hold off Setzer. Bobby Hamilton took fifth.

David Starr, Jon Wood, Robert Pressley, Travis Kvapil and Andy Houston completed the top 10 as 16 of 32 finishers -- the latter number a Phoenix series record -- logged all 150 laps.

Gaughan challenged for the lead until well past the mid-point but, with 10 laps to go, saw the engine in his Dodge go sour.

Instead of adding to his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship lead, Gaughan now is locked in the tightest four-way battle in series history entering the Nov. 14 Ford 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

"I was catching Kevin and we were going for it but, with nine laps to go, we ran over a big chunk of debris," Gaughan said. "I heard it. We hit it and it popped into the engine compartment and all of a sudden we lost a cylinder."

The Las Vegas driver can wrap up the title with a fourth-place finish in the finale as Musgrave trails by 26 points with Kvapil and Musgrave back by 34 and 39, respectively.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.