NASCAR: Kevin Harvick’s incredible streak comes to an end at Bristol

Kevin Harvick’s incredible run of top 10 finishes came to an end in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick entered Sunday’s 500-lap Food City 500 presents the Supermarket Heroes 500 NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway without a single finish outside of the top 10 through eight races this season.

In fact, Harvick, who has led the championship standings since after the 2020 season’s fourth race at Phoenix Raceway, had not finished outside of the top 10 since the second of four rounds of last year’s playoffs when he finished in 17th place at Talladega Superspeedway on Monday, October 14.

On Sunday, that was 230 days ago.

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Harvick’s 17th place finish in this race ended a streak of six straight top seven finishes, and it was just his second finish outside of the top seven in 12 races.

After that, he had recorded 13 consecutive finishes of 10th place or better, including a win at Texas Motor Speedway last November and another win at Darlington Raceway this May in NASCAR’s first race back amid the coronavirus pandemic. His average finish during this 13-race span was an incredible 3.92.

But on Sunday at the four-turn, 0.533-mile (0.858-kilometer) high-banked oval in Bristol, Tennessee known as “The Last Great Colosseum”, that streak came to an end — and literally by a nose.

After contact with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Erik Jones caused damage to his #4 Ford, Harvick had to battle back to put himself in a position to extend his streak. Jones battled back well and finished in fifth place.

But Harvick finished just a few feet behind 10th place Bubba Wallace of Richard Petty Motorsports in 11th.

Entering this race, the longest top 10 streak other than Harvick’s was that of Joe Gibbs Racing’s Martin Truex Jr., which was four. That streak came to an end, as he was involved in a wreck and finished in 20th place.

The longest active top 10 streak is now four, and it belongs to Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski, who won the race. He has won two of the last four races and recorded finishes of fourth and seventh place in the other two.

Aside of Keselowski, just two other drivers have finished in the top 10 in consecutive races. Chip Ganassi Racing’s Kurt Busch is on a three-race streak of top 10 results while Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Dillon is on a two-race streak.