NASCAR
Bob Pockrass, NASCAR 6y

Kevin Harvick, Stewart-Haas Racing lead the way at Dover

NASCAR

DOVER, Del. -- One of the main on-track storylines of the 2018 NASCAR season has focused on the strength of Kevin Harvick and the entire Stewart-Haas Racing organization.

Dover International Speedway provided the stage for a change. Could Jimmie Johnson win at the track where he last recorded a NASCAR Cup victory 11 months ago? Could Chase Elliott earn his first Cup win at a place where he had an average finish of 3.25? Could pole sitter Kyle Larson rally from the rear of the field after failing pre-race tech three times at a place that's tough to pass?

All of those would have served as dramatic storylines, one that would have people saying, "Did you see that?"

But thanks to Stewart-Haas Racing, it was more of the same ... and no one was all that surprised.

Harvick passed his SHR teammate Clint Bowyer with 63 laps remaining and cruised to a win in the AAA 400. Daniel Suarez was third, Martin Truex Jr. was fourth, and another SHR car, Kurt Busch, finished fifth.

It was the fourth win of the season for Harvick, who led a race-high 201 laps and spoiled any hopes of Bowyer winning for the second time this year.

"The biggest thing is we haven't went back and talked about the races that we've won," Harvick crew chief Rodney Childers said. "We go back, and we talk about how to get better every week, and we build better race cars, and they build better engines, and we've done better on pit road.

"To keep this going, we're going to have to get a lot better every single week and to keep it to where it needs to be when the championship comes around."

This was one of those weekends when Harvick owned the best car from the start of practice Friday and maybe even qualifying, where he finished second to Larson. Dover, thanks to its concrete surface, can end up as a place where a team tunes a great car into a mediocre one, making the wrong decision when it comes to changes for race day.

Harvick and his team had none of that. He led the first 21 laps. He won both of the stages. From start to finish, everyone looked at Harvick as the car to beat.

"You don't want to screw it up," Harvick said. "I felt like we had a really good car from the time we unloaded, and I think you could tell that from when we qualified.

"That's usually not my strong point, qualifying up here, and to be able to qualify on the front row, we had three great practices and everything just kind of fell into place, and when they dropped the green flag, it was definitely still good."

Just how good? Harvick won by 7.45 seconds.

"It was just one of those weekends where the car was spot‑on from the time we got here, and the guys are just doing a great job," Harvick said.

"Everybody is just so detail-oriented right now, and I feel like we're playoff racing on a weekly basis, and if you're going to win a bunch of races, that's what you have to do."

With the win, Harvick sits third in the 2018 standings but has more playoff points -- points that are added to the playoff resets for the first three rounds -- than any other driver. Bowyer sits fourth in the standings, Busch sixth and Aric Almirola 11th.

Bowyer had the lead at Dover when the race was stopped for 41 minutes because of rain with 80 laps remaining. He couldn't hold off Harvick, but he wasn't all that surprised. He knows how good and how close all the SHR cars are as far as setups and aerodynamics.

"The biggest thing is when you go to the track, you need to be able to bounce off each other and work with one another, and sometimes [when] something is different or whatever, it's hard to do that," Bowyer said.

"This year, we've been working well every single weekend. We're pushing each other to be better, and our setups are all relatively the same, and it shows on the race track."

One of the reasons Bowyer cited for the consistency: Tony Gibson, Busch's former crew chief, plays a critical role in the shop.

"He's kind of the floor babysitter, so to speak," team owner Tony Stewart said of Gibson. "I'm kind of joking about it, but he's made a huge impact.

"You really need somebody of his caliber on the floor to really tie this all together, and I think that's really what we've seen here is having him tie all four of these teams together at the shop and kind of watching over everything and make sure that we're staying the course."

The course: getting all four drivers into the playoffs.

"It's days like today that build the momentum in the organization," Stewart said. "It's another milestone for us to have three cars in the top five today. We're proud of everybody. ... [We're] in our second year of building our own chassis, and our aero department, I feel like, is on point right now, just every aspect of it.

"Everybody is working hard, and it's about evolution. You have to keep evolving and keep pushing the envelope."

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