Harvick proves a point at Watkins Glen

Dominates for second-straight victory

Saturday, Aug. 11, 2007

• Slideshow | Saturday at Watkins Glen
• Race Results | Watkins Glen Busch Series

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – There was no controversy to cloud this win.

Kevin Harvick had the frontstretch all to himself on Saturday for a burnout to celebrate his dominating victory in the Zippo 200 at Watkins Glen International, his second consecutive road course win in the NASCAR Busch Series.

Harvick won last weekend’s inaugural event at Montreal, but his victory was overshadowed by the post-race antics of Robby Gordon, who ignored repeated directives from NASCAR to leave the track late in the race and did his own burnout alongside Harvick.

This is his 31st series victory, tying JackIngram for second all time in Busch Series competition. It was fifth this season and first at the 2.45-mile road course. He has won two of the series’ road course races this season.

“Last week, they all wanted to talk about the controversy. I don’t think we left them much choice this week but to talk about us,” said Harvick, who held off Richard Childress teammate Jeff Burton by 3.529 seconds for the win.

“We didn’t qualify like we wanted to but we thought our car was really good in race (set-up). Right when they dropped the green flag, it was good to go.”

Pole winner Kurt Busch dominated much of the early portion of the race but utilized a slightly different pit strategy. When most other cars had pit for their final fuel stop during a caution on Lap 50, Busch lined up 10th on the restart.

He made his way to fourth on a restart with 10 laps remaining and mounted a final charge on Harvick. In one lap Busch went from fourth to second, but ultimately lost ground in Turn 1 and fell back to third.

“We paced the field early on. When we pit early on in the race, we took four tires while a lot of others took fuel only and that put us behind,” Busch said.

“I ran it hard every lap and I think that contributed to our problem. Right when it was ‘show time’, the (brake) pedal bounced off the floorboard.”

Paul Menard finished fourth and rookie Brad Coleman was fifth. Series point leader Carl Edwards had to make a trip to the garage to fix the sway bar and ended up 32nd.

While Edwards maintains a 766-point lead over David Reutimann in driver points, Edwards’ No. 60 team holds only a slim 41-point advantage over RCR’s No. 29 team, which has been shared by drivers Burton and Scott Wimmer this season.

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