Stewart-Haas Racing’s mission during Sunday’s Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway was to dig Kevin Harvick out of his 33rd place starting position and accelerate to the front, where they thought they’d be safe.
It inadvertently backfired.
Harvick, driving the No. 4 Outback Steakhouse Chevrolet SS was running in the top-10, when fellow Chase contender Matt Kenseth hit him on a Lap-227 restart, causing both drivers to spin, along with eventual fourth place finisher Tony Stewart.
When Kenseth’s car wheel-hopped in Turn 1, his No. 20 Toyota Camry shot up the track and directly into the left rear of Harvick, who slammed the outside wall, heavily damaging his car and rally from the back to the front.
Harvick drove away from the accident scene and headed straight to the garage, where crew chief Rodney Childers already had a repair program in place. Harvick later returned to the race on Lap 270 and oddly enough finished in the same spot he started, 33rd.
Following the checkered flag, the three-time winner in 2014 had some stern words for Kenseth regarding their run-in.
“He won’t win this championship,” Harvick said. “If we don’t, he won’t.”
Kenseth, who recovered to finish sixth, understood where Harvick’s anger was stemming from.
“I don’t blame him (Kevin Harvick) for feeling that way honestly,” Kenseth said. “It was a mistake – he was an innocent bystander and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I totally understand how he feels and I totally understand why he would say that. I totally get it.
“He knows it was a mistake too, but that doesn’t really help him. He got taken out of the race for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The finish put Harvick in a massive hole after the first of three races in Round 3 of the Chase. He likely will need to win one of the next two races at Texas Motor Speedway or Phoenix (Ariz.) International Raceway to advance to the championship race at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway in three weeks.
Leaving Martinsville, Harvick is last (ninth) among the Chase hopefuls, 33 points behind leader Jeff Gordon and 28 markers behind the cutoff, currently retained by Kenseth.
The brightside?
Harvick and his Stewart-Haas team won their first race together at Phoenix in the spring.
The bad?
Engine failure relegated the No. 4 team to a 42nd place finish at Texas Motor Speedway in April.
They can’t afford another finish like that next Sunday – or they’ll be out of the Chase.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
