WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — The Aug. 4 Busch Series race at Montreal was a street brawl. Seven days later in its second-straight road-course event, drivers showed a completely different face by conducting a high-speed chess match.
It didn’t change the winner, though, as Kevin Harvick proved as adept at following strategy in the Finger Lakes wine country as he had been at trading paint in the Canadian metropolis.
In a finish lacking the Montreal fireworks, Harvick, who qualified 11th, beat Richard Childress Racing teammate Jeff Burton by 3.6 seconds in Saturday’s Zippo 200.
Pole-winner Kurt Busch, who could have upset the Harvick strategy had he not lost his brakes in the closing stages, settled for third, with Paul Menard fourth and Joe Gibbs development driver Brad Coleman an impressive fifth — the best among the non-Nextel Cup regulars.
Matt Kenseth, Bobby Labonte, Casey Mears, Ryan Newman and Andy Lally completed the top 10, with Lally the best of the road-racing specialists.
Standard NASCAR road race pit strategy is to make the final stop as early as possible, regardless of track position or status. Crew chief Shane Wilson brought Harvick in for his second and final visit on lap 39 of the 82-lap contest, just before the caution was shown for Steve Wallace’s spin.
On an oval track, that sequence would have put Harvick a lap down, but with Watkins Glen’s 75-second green-flag lap time, he remained on the lead lap. He restarted behind only the six cars that did not pit. When Busch hit pit road later and Greg Biffle followed, the lead was Harvick’s for good.
“We stuck to our plan and did everything we planned to do when we were close to our (pit) windows,” the winner explained.
But the antidote to superior pit strategy is a faster car, and Busch definitely had that as the race entered its final stages. He blasted past Burton and Menard for second on a restart with 10 laps to go but ran wide in turn one a lap later and gave the runner-up spot back.
“The pedal went to the floor,” Busch said. “I ran the brakes off it. That’s easy to do with this little Busch car.”
Point-leader Carl Edwards had to replace a broken track bar and finished 32nd, the next-to-last car running. However, runner-up David Reutimann could only manage 26th, so Edwards lost just 21 points off his lead, which stands at an unapproachable 766 points. Among other notables in the field, Juan Pablo Montoya was 33rd with front-end damage in his last scheduled Busch Series start, and Scott Pruett settled for 18th after a pit-entry violation.
Harvick was clearly annoyed at the Montreal melodrama, where Gordon’s theatrics took center stage following a race Harvick had won, but he used it as motivation.
“To have them hardly talk about you when you win a race is kind of frustrating, but you don’t whine about it,” he reasoned.