Good strategy, more than good luck, was key to Kevin Harvick’s Darlington win
Kevin Harvick echoed the surprise felt by those watching NASCAR’s Southern 500 Sunday at Darlington Raceway.
“I don’t even know how we did that,” Harvick told his No. 4 team over the radio in the seconds after crossing the finish line.
Harvick’s 57th career victory came after the Cup driver led fewer than 10% of the laps in the marathon race. Martin Truex Jr. led most of those laps, 196 of 367, and was well-positioned for a top-three finish.
But with only a few laps left, third-place running Harvick cycled to the front of the field after Truex Jr., in second place, passed then-leader Chase Elliott for first. Truex made contact with the No. 9 driver, and both made contact with the wall, sending them out of the top-10 and Harvick to another first-place finish.
While Harvick’s shock was apparent in the moments after his victory, what put him in position to seize the opportunity was less stunning since it’s the factor that has helped him dominate the regular season: pit strategy.
“We didn’t have the race car that we needed, but that strategy they kept employing got us track position and was going to be the winning strategy if the caution doesn’t come out at the end,” Harvick said.
He was referring to crew chief Rodney Childers’ effectively-timed calls to refuel and change the No. 4’s tires on pit road, including one call in the second stage to pit during the green flag ahead of the field. That put Harvick in first when the rest of the field later pitted. Although Harvick wasn’t able to sustain the lead for the stage close (he lost his position to Truex on pit road), he was able to stay up front through the final stage to get into the top-three.
“We decided that the best thing for us was to split it into thirds, and they decided to split it into halves,” Childers said of his team’s strategy compared to the No. 19 team of Truex Jr. “It seemed like the people that were trying to split it into halves ended up having to pit a little bit early just because the tires were going away so bad and getting down to cords and unraveling.”
Childers said the decision to split the race into thirds for pit stops had to do with the car’s right rear tire, specifically, which was cording at the track “Too Tough to Tame.”
“(We) felt like we needed to play it on the cautious side and kind of be aggressive at the same time,” Childers said. “So that’s why we decided to split it into thirds.”
The race fell in Harvick’s favor with Elliott’s rotten luck, but it highlighted his team’s pattern of getting itself up the front late. Harvick has led 1,149 laps this season — only 32 of those came Sunday, which is the second-lowest number of laps he’s led in any race he’s won this year. Like his win at the first Pocono race in which Harvick led only 17 laps and took the checkered flag, his win at Darlington saw a late move into first place. At Pocono, it was through a two-tire pit call with under 40 laps left that helped him hold his lead over Denny Hamlin. At Darlington, it was the luck of the leaders crashing out, but putting himself in the right spot to stay in contention late.
Like Austin Dillon and Joey Logano, who finished in second and third, respectively, Harvick had to race cleanly for most of the 500 miles to get into the top-five. Harvick started in eighth, stayed in the top 10 ten in the first stage (10th) and then finished in third with the early pit call in the second stage. Although Harvick cycled behind the three playoff Joe Gibbs Racing drivers in the final stage, his earlier pit stops put him in a better position late after both Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin fell back. Elliott’s run to the lead was a testament to the No. 4 team’s strategy, since Elliott, who led the second-most laps of the evening, pitted around the same time as Harvick.
“I think there were several moments where we could have been a lap down and (Childers) called this race to win,” Harvick said. “I think he knows the importance of winning races. He also knows the importance of that cushion that’s sitting there.”
The points cushion Harvick already had over the field allowed him to make those aggressive calls. There was security in knowing the team had already run well at Darlington after Harvick’s first victory of the season at the track in May, which Childers said was somewhat of a curse since they “learned too much” from that experience. The team brought the same car back, but Childers said it was “out-of-control loose” early in the race, which the crew had to make quick adjustments for.
With seven wins going into the playoffs and the team’s goal to get that number to 10 by the championship race, Childers said the team wanted to continue to build momentum into the postseason.
“Normally if you don’t win a (playoff) race, you’re not going to win the championship,” Childers said. “Right now we’ve got decent speed. Tonight we missed it pretty bad, but overall we were able to hang in there and keep fighting the whole race and get a finish at the end of it that was probably better than what we deserved.”
With the next playoff races in the series at Richmond and Bristol — tough tracks on tires that also heavily rely on pit strategy — Harvick is still well-positioned to improve his dominion over the field in points early into the postseason. There is only one way for him to improve with it this early into the playoffs still, and that’s by scoring points.
Regardless of any late luck that put the No. 4 team in Victory Lane, they put themselves in position to do just that and capitalized when it was time.
“The best way up is to have that cushion get bigger,” Harvick said.
This story was originally published September 7, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Good strategy, more than good luck, was key to Kevin Harvick’s Darlington win."
