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Harvick calls his All-Star runner-up finish 'terrible'
Kevin Harvick called his second-place finish in the Monster Energy All-Star Race “terrible” after leading for much of the night.
“We shot both of our feet off with the absolute dominant car,” Harvick said. “The guys did a great job preparing the race car, [but] we just weren’t ready to make a pit stop on pit road tonight.”
Harvick led twice for a total of 33 laps, which was a race high. Starting third, Harvick's Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang took control of the race early and appeared to be the fastest car. After winning the second stage, Harvick came off pit road eighth and shortly after the restart radioed that he had a loose wheel.
As Harvick fell off the pace on the backstretch, the caution came out for an accident between Erik Jones and Austin Dillon. Under the caution, Harvick gave up his track position to pit for the wheel to be tightened.
Asked if there needed to be changes to his pit crew, Harvick said no, they just need to be ready to race.
“They’ve done it all year,” he said. “You can’t just show up and have it be a disaster. I mean, they’ve been great all year [but] tonight wasn’t great, that’s for sure. We spotted them the whole field. We re-started at the back with 15 laps to go.
“They’re experienced enough. They know that it didn’t go the way that they wanted it to go and they’ll go back and they’ll be ready. That’s the great part about having an experienced pit crew: They can go back and fix it. They better fix it.”
Harvick lined up fourth with 12 laps to go off the race’s final caution, but took over the runnerup spot when Kyle Busch bounced off the wall with a couple of laps to go.
“Once they get single file, as soon as they drive in your lane, they push up [into] the groove, so you’ve got to go where they aren’t. Larson (who won the race) was fast enough to run the bottom, and that’s where I needed to run to really make time,” Harvick said.
Kelly Crandall
Kelly has been on the NASCAR beat full-time since 2013, and joined RACER as chief NASCAR writer in 2017. Her work has also appeared in NASCAR.com, the NASCAR Illustrated magazine, and NBC Sports. A corporate communications graduate from Central Penn College, Crandall is a two-time George Cunningham Writer of the Year recipient from the National Motorsports Press Association.
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