NASCAR: Kevin Harvick wasn’t the big winner at Richmond

Kevin Harvick won Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway, but he wasn’t the biggest winner of the afternoon.

Just seven days after ending a 65-race win drought which had dated back to September 2020, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick became the seventh driver to win more than one of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season’s first 23 races.

He backed up his win at Michigan International Speedway last Sunday afternoon with a win in this past Sunday afternoon’s Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond Raceway, holding off Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell to earn his 60th career win and move into a ninth place tie on the all-time wins list.

With two races remaining in the regular season and the season having already produced 15 different winners, there is still a chance that there will be more winners than playoff spots (16). In that case, the multi-race winners would be locked in.

With 26 regular season races, there can be no more than 13 multi-race winners in any given regular season, and with just two regular season races remaining this year, there can be no more than nine.

The 16 playoff spots go to the regular season champion and the 15 drivers who rank highest in wins. In the event that there are more than 16 winners, the tiebreaker among the single-race winners becomes points.

As a result, Harvick’s second win of the season officially locked him into the playoffs. But with Harvick having entered Sunday’s race ahead of five of the other eight single-race winners in the point standings, it was highly unlikely that he was ever going to miss the playoffs, even with one win.

So he wasn’t the biggest winner on Sunday.

The big winners on Sunday were Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Martin Truex Jr., and 23XI Racing’s Kurt Busch.

With no new winner having emerged, there is still one playoff spot provisionally open on points. Blaney currently holds that spot, and while Truex did lose some ground to him, he is the only other driver in contention for it, sitting 26 points behind the driver of the #12 Ford.

As for Busch, he is currently the lowest placed single-race winner in the point standings, having missed the last four races as he continues to recover from the concussion-like symptoms he suffered following his qualifying crash at Pocono Raceway.

He now sits 64 points behind the next lowest single-race winner, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe. This gap is one which will be difficult to make up in just two races, as only 60 points can be scored by a single driver in a single race.

So if the regular season does end up with more than 16 different winners, Busch could find himself failing to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since 2012, despite having won the race at Kansas Speedway back in mid-May.

And there very well could have been a 16th different winner on Sunday, leaving two opportunities for a 17th to emerge before the playoffs begin.

RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher finished the race in third place and had a legitimate shot to earn his first victory since 2016. Yes, he does sit in 22nd place in the point standings, which is lower than all eight of the single-race winners, but he would have been in 21st had he won, putting him ahead of Busch.

This would have positioned Buescher 15th in the provisional playoff picture, ahead of Busch on the bubble in 16th, leaving both Blaney and Truex on the outside looking in.

Blaney and Truex sit in second and fourth place in the point standings, respectively, but are still at risk of battling for 17th — not a championship — throughout the four-round, 10-race postseason. Fortunately for them, there is still a chance that points will be enough to make it in. And, of course, both could still win.