NASCAR: Kevin Harvick sees 27-race streak end at Talladega
By Asher Fair
Kevin Harvick saw his 27-race streak atop the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings come to an end at Talladega Superspeedway.
Ever since finishing in second place behind Team Penske’s Joey Logano at Phoenix Raceway back in March in what was the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season’s fourth race, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick has sat atop the championship standings.
He carried his lead into the unexpected 10-week hiatus caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and he extended it by winning the first race back in mid-May at Darlington Raceway.
Entering the second race of the round of 12 of the four-round, 10-race playoffs at Talladega Superspeedway, he still hadn’t been anywhere other than first place in points since after Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman won the season’s third race at Auto Club Speedway back in early March.
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But his streak atop the standings, which was at 27 races entering Sunday afternoon’s YellaWood 500, ended at Talladega Superspeedway.
Harvick now sits in second place in the standings, 20 points (3,141 to 3,121) behind Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin. Hamlin has been in second for quite some time, but he took the lead after taking the checkered flag to win the race while Harvick finished back in 20th.
Of course, on points alone, Harvick still leads and has now led for 28 consecutive races. In fact, he leads Hamlin by a whopping 128 points (1,255 to 1,127), so it’s hard to see anybody overtaking him for the lead with five races remaining on the 2020 schedule.
But because of the points resets at the beginning of the playoffs and at the end of the round of 16, that gap shrunk only to his lead in playoffs points.
He had still managed not to give up that lead at all in the round of 16, primarily due to the fact that he won two of the three races in the round.
Harvick hasn’t mathematically locked himself in the round of 8, but he is pretty safe entering the round of 12 finale at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. He sits 68 points above the round of 8 cut line and 47 points above where it could be should a playoff driver from outside the top eight emerge victorious in what is considered by many to be a “wild card” race.
Any scenario that nets him at least eight points in that race locks him into the round of 8, irrespective of what else happens.
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This race, the Bank of America Roval 400, is set to be broadcast live on NBC beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET this Sunday, October 11.