KEVIN HARVICK WAS "THE CLOSER" SUNDAY AT BRISTOL

Kevin Harvick Was “The Closer” Sunday At Bristol

Kevin Harvick lived up to an old nickname of “The Closer” on Sunday at Bristol, taking command in the second half of the race and leading the final seventy-one laps to notch his second victory of the season.  The race ended some twenty-three hours after it originally started on Saturday night, when just forty-eight laps were run before rain moved in and pushed the event to a late-afternoon green flag on Sunday.  Kyle Busch started third and was dominant throughout the first half of the race, leading 184 of the first 250 laps.  But what appeared to be a broken part on the suspension of his Number-18 Toyota sent the car spinning across the track.  Contact from Justin Allgaier ended Busch’s day with a thirty-ninth-place finish.  Harvick entered the fray soon after, charging from his Number-24 starting spot to grab his first lead at Lap-286 of five hundred.  Harvick ran consistently among the top five the rest of the way, passing Denny Hamlin seventy-one laps from the finish and never looking back to record his thirty-third career win – loosening Joe Gibbs Racing’s tight hold on short-track competition in 2016.  Before Sunday, J-G-R had won all three races run on ovals less than one mile in length … Harvick’s margin of victory over runner-up Ricky Stenhouse Junior was two seconds with Hamlin finishing third, Austin Dillon fourth and rookie Chris Buescher fifth – which lifted him into thirtieth place in the point standings as he now becomes eligible for a post-season Chase berth with his win at Pocono earlier this month.

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