Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick secured his second consecutive victory this season by winning the NASCAR Cup Series Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond Raceway on Sunday, becoming the first driver to win back-to-back races so far this season. This victory marked Harvick’s 60th career win in the NASCAR Cup Series, fourth at Richmond, and Stewart-Haas Racing’s 95th win overall.
“Congratulations to Gene, Tony, Rodney, Kevin, and everyone at Stewart-Haas Racing on the win at Richmond,” said Doug Yates, President and CEO of Roush Yates Engines. “Kevin and Rodney carried the momentum from last week’s win at Michigan and executed their plan throughout this race for the win!”
“The cars have been running good week in and week out, and you see that we have a lot better understanding of what’s going on with how we adjusted on the car after the first run and were able to get our car handling a lot better. I think as it got dark, the racetrack really came to our Mobil 1 Ford Mustang. Just got to thank Mobil, Busch Light, GearWrench, Hunt Brothers, Rheem, Ford, Xfinity, Morton Buildings, E-Z-Go, everybody who helps Stewart-Haas on this 4 car,” commented Harvick.
Sunday’s 400-lap race saw a battle between strategy and execution on long green flag runs. There were five cautions in the race for a total of 28 laps. Team Penske’s Joey Logano took charge in the middle of the race, leading a total of 222 of 400 laps and winning Stage 2. Stage 3 started with an incident involving four cars, bringing out the fourth caution of the race. Logano held off the lead early in the stage until Harvick completed the race-winning pass on Lap 334. Harvick was able to hold off a hard-charging Chris Buescher who was looking for his first win of the season along with Christopher Bell. Harvick fought through lapped traffic on the final lap of the race and crossed the finish line 0.441 seconds ahead of second place, securing his second consecutive win this season.
Ford Performance teammates Chris Buescher with Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing finished in P3, Joey Logano with Team Penske finished in P6, Aric Almirola with Stewart-Haas Racing finished in P8, and Ryan Blaney with Team Penske rounded out the top-10 finishing in P10.
NASCAR Cup returns to action next weekend with the Go Bowling at the Glen at Watkins Glen International on Sunday, August 21st while the Xfinity Series returns from a one-week break and races at Watkins Glen on Saturday, August 20th.