RELATED: Full race results | Updated series standings
CONCORD, N.C. — Finishing as a runner-up is a familiar feeling for Kevin Harvick. He’s done it three times this season after doing it a modern-era record 13 times last year.
Then there’s Jimmie Johnson, a mainstay on the intermediate tracks with seven career wins at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Yet in the Coca-Cola 600, finishing second and third as Harvick and Johnson respectively did, to the dominant performance of Martin Truex Jr. could almost feel like a victory in its own right. Truex was on a completely different level Sunday, leading 392 of 400 laps (a Charlotte Motor Speedway record) and 588 of the 600 miles run (the most ever in a NASCAR race) to score the victory.
The changing conditions of the race saw Harvick’s car come to life in the latter quarter of the night, and he overtook Johnson for second place but couldn’t quite get to Truex. That result was a departure from the beginning of the night where the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points leader had what he described as a “10th-place car.”
“Early on, we were just really, really bad,” Harvick said. “Our Jimmy John’s Chevy was just tight getting into the corners and loose getting up off the corners and there were just a lot of problems that we really couldn’t narrow-in on one thing to change something.
“Rodney (Childers, crew chief) came on the radio and he said ‘Hey, we just made a huge adjustment.’ And from that point on, it was a lot better. I really thought we were just going to drive right by him (Truex), but I got tight those last two runs compared to the run that we were really good and made up all the ground.”
The gains the No. 4 crew made over the night were not lost on the 2014 champion, a three-time winner at Charlotte.
“When you’re able to take a 10th‑place car at best, for the first 450 miles and make adjustments on it, those are huge gains,” Harvick said. “I was just happy we were competitive at the end of the race. We didn’t have the fastest car, obviously. It seemed like the 78 must have led the whole race.”
RELATED: A dominant showing for Truex
Harvick wasn’t the only one trying to run down Truex’s No. 78 Toyota in the race. Johnson also had a few shots at trying to get by the 78 but couldn’t quite make it stick.
“I thought I had him clear twice and somehow he just drove by on the straightaway,” Johnson said. “His car was just really strong and there were many times where I thought I’d get close and then he’d pick the pace up a couple tenths. I think he had plenty of speed on the side and could really control the race.”
Johnson, victorious at the 1.5-mile track as recently as 2014, led five laps on the night — the second-highest total.
“This is the best car we’ve had in Charlotte for a long, long time,” Johnson said. “It just shows you how good the 78 (Truex) was and the 4 (Harvick) got a little better than us in the end.”
The third-place finish was Johnson’s first top-five finish in a month since a third-place effort at Richmond International Raceway. The result also saw Johnson move up two spots to third in the point standings.
“It just drove really good all night long,” Johnson explained. “Balance stayed very similar from corner entry to corner exit, which is tough to do here. I could drive the car, the car wasn’t driving me. The last few times we’ve been here, I’ve just been kind of hanging on so I think we are going the right way with the race cars.”