NASCAR: Kevin Harvick can overcome early crash, win at Texas
By Asher Fair
Kevin Harvick feels that he can overcome his poor start to Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway and win for a fourth year in a row.
It’s Wednesday, October 28, and we are in the midst of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. Unfortunately, NASCAR has been stuck in the mist of Texas Motor Speedway, so while we should be looking ahead to the upcoming round of 8 race at Martinsville Speedway, we have yet to see the completion of this past Sunday’s round of 8 race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick, the three-time reigning winner of the playoff race at the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) oval in Fort Worth, Texas, is looking ahead to both races.
The 2014 champion is excited to return to Martinsville Speedway this weekend to run a Mobil 1 paint scheme, and he is excited to announce a promotion in which Mobil 1 is giving fans the chance to win exclusive prizes they won’t be able to get anywhere else, throughout the remainder of the playoffs.
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“This weekend at Martinsville, Mobil 1 is the primary sponsor on the car, but always a great partner of ours, and you can go to http://officialmotoroilofnascar.com/ and win a whole bunch of cool prizes, autographed stuff from myself and teammates,” Harvick told Beyond the Flag.
But before we get there, Harvick still has to worry about competing at Texas Motor Speedway, and after 52 of the 334 laps were contested on Sunday before the first of many rain delays, he finds himself one lap off the lead lap due to early contact with the wall.
However, he believes that he can overcome that in the remaining 282 laps, which are scheduled to begin at 5:00 p.m. ET this afternoon, with live coverage set to be provided by NBC Sports Network.
“The car ran really well after we came in and pulled the fenders off the tires and were able to go back out on the race track,” he noted. “So we’ve been able to repair that a lot better [during] the caution that we had for rain. The speed was still in the car, so now we just have to get the body back to where everybody is comfortable with that, and I think the balance could be just slightly different here and there, but I feel good about where the speed was before everything got shut down, so we got really lucky.”
Based on the provisional stage points and race points that he and the other seven remaining championship contenders are slated to score based on their running positions at the red flag, Harvick would only be two points above the Championship 4 cut line. He opened the round of 8 with a 45-point advantage over that cut line.
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However, he isn’t worried about that gap.
“I don’t count points, don’t look at points, don’t care about points,” he said. “I know that we’re going to be in a lot better position as we go forward. You’re not going to race any differently, compared to if you look at the points or don’t look at the points. So we’re going to be in a much better position as we move forward and I still feel like we have a car that’s capable of winning the race.”