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AVONDALE, Ariz. — Kevin Harvick, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver who has made a habit of bouncing back from adversity, couldn’t bounce back this time.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver, faced with an esstentially must-win situation in Sunday’s Can-Am 500, finished fourth instead, and won’t be one of the four drivers competing for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship next weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Not that Harvick and his team, led by crew chief Rodney Childers, didn’t nearly pull it off. After losing a lap during the first half of the race, the team battled back, continued to make changes to the No. 4 Chevrolet and when the race went into overtime following a caution, Harvick was inside the top five and hopeful.
There was a crack in the door after all, with only Joey Logano, Kyle Busch and Kyle Larson between himself and the winner’s circle.
But Larson shot low on the final restart of the extended, 324-lap event at Phoenix International Raceway, slowing Harvick’s progress while allowing Logano, the eventual race winner, and Busch to drive away.
“That was the hard part,” said Harvick, who needed a victory to secure a spot in the championship round of the Chase. “The 42 (Larson) kind of dive-bombed everyone three-wide.”
After his fourth-place finish, Harvick made it a point to pay Larson a visit on pit road after the race.
“You have three guys racing for the championship there,” Harvick said. “I know he wants to win but all in all it didn’t really make a race out of it.”
Harvick’s record at the 1-mile track has been stout, with six victories in eight races before Sunday. He was easily the favorite coming into the event, but perhaps slightly less so after two days of practice.
There was no domination here Sunday, just a hard day’s work. To come as close as they did, he said, was a testament to the team.
“We just started way too far off on Friday,” he said. “We never got a handle on the race car. They made it a ton better in the race and we were in contention there at the end and just came up short. I’m just really proud of everybody for the effort that they put in.”
Harvick won the series title just two years ago, the first year of the elimination-style format. But the format wasn’t as kind this time around.
The final three-round segment saw him finish two laps down at Martinsville and while he finished sixth last week at Texas, he failed to make up any significant ground on those in front.
The fourth-place run at Phoenix was both too little and too late to be of any benefit.
“It was a very challenging Chase for us for all the mechanical failures and situations that we had going on,” he said. “We kept rebounding and winning races and today we were a lap down and came back to have a chance at the end. That says a lot about the character of our race team.
“We just came up short this year.”
