It would be hard to blame Kevin Harvick
if he wanted the NASCAR Busch Series season to go on forever.
Harvick dominated the field again Saturday in the O'Reilly
Challenge 300 at Texas Motor Speedway, winning for the second
straight week and third time in his last four starts. It was the
ninth Busch victory of what is already a championship season for the
Nextel Cup star.
To cap another great day for Harvick, after being told by his
team he was going to be close on gas, he did run out _ at the
finish.
Harvick chuckled as he took the checkered flag and said on the
radio: ``Out of gas, boys. Awesome!''
With the title determined last month in Charlotte, most of the
pre-race attention was on newcomer Juan Pablo Montoya, starting only
his second NASCAR race in preparation for a full-time Cup ride next
season.
The former Champ Car and Formula One star had a difficult but
educational day on the 1.5-mile Texas oval.
He qualified 10th, but started near the rear of the 43-car field
after having to make a stop during the pace laps to realign the
front valance on his Chip Ganassi Racing Dodge. When the race began,
he moved steadily through the pack and was up to 25th before
slipping up the banking and bouncing hard off the wall.
That sent Montoya to the pits for repairs and left him 41st, two
laps off the pace. Driving a damaged car that couldn't keep up with
the leaders, Montoya stayed on track to the end, finishing 28th _
three laps behind Harvick.
``We had a top-10 car, but the problem at the beginning made it
really hard,'' said Montoya, who finished 11th in his Busch and
NASCAR debut a week ago at Memphis. ``It was good experience,
though, and, if I had more time in the car, it could have been a
little better.''
Asked about hitting the wall, the Colombian driver said, ``I was
trying to pass somebody on the outside. People say I give myself a
lot of room out there, so I calculated how far I could go.
``I calculated about this much,'' he added, holding his hands
about two feet apart, ``and the wall was there.''
After getting out of his car in Victory Lane, Harvick, who has 16
consecutive top-10 finishes in Busch, said: ``There were no burnouts
today for a reason. It ran out (of gas) coming out of turn four.
They told me it was going to be close and it would have been my
fault if we had run out.
``It's just been one of those years when everything goes right,''
added Harvick, within one win of Sam Ard's 1983 season record of 10
with two races remaining.
Harvick beat fellow Cup star Tony Stewart to the finish by
0.862-seconds _ about five car-lengths. Jeff Burton was third,
followed by pole-winner Mark Martin and Ron Hornaday Jr., the
highest-finishing Busch regular. Cup drivers have won 31 of 33 Busch
races this season.
Told that Harvick ran out of gas at the end, Stewart shrugged.
``I wouldn't have wanted to win it that way,'' he said. ``It was
so much fun running with him. We just had two identical cars
today.''
Harvick enters Sunday's Dickies 500 sixth in the Cup points and
with an outside chance to become the first driver to win NASCAR's
top two titles in the same season.
On Saturday, his Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet started
fourth, took the lead on lap 46 and wound up out front for 145 of
the 200 laps, including the final 56.
