At the dawn of a new decade, Kevin Harvick was plenty ready to leave the 2000s in the past.
A decade that started with so much promise after landing a full-time Busch Series deal with Richard Childress Racing saw him end the decade on a three-year winless drought in the Cup Series.
His 2006 season was one for the ages as the 30-year-old replicated his feat of running all of the O’Reilly and Cup races in the same year, resulting in a blistering O’Reilly campaign where he took home his second series title in six years as well as a career year in Cup where he won five times and was in spitting distance of the championship.
The next season kicked off in an unimaginable way that we detailed earlier in this series when he scored his only Daytona 500 victory in his first race with new sponsor Shell Pennzoil, but outside of an All-Star Race win and two straight Clash victories in 2009 and 2010, The Closer found himself closed out of victory lane in points races.
His points finishes over this time tell a confounding story as 2007 saw the 29 team wind up 10th, but he rebounded in a way in 2008 by going winless while finishing fourth in the standings.
All of that said, 2009 would be the deepest valley that Harvick and Richard Childress Racing had as a whole.
Hardly competitive, it seemed the flagship 29 Chevy never saw the front, doomed to a midpack existence throughout much of the season.
A great runner-up finish at the rain-shortened Daytona 500 and strong performances in Atlanta and Homestead were the only bright spots in an otherwise dim campaign where Harvick finished 19th in the standings, third in RCR’s stable and only ahead of Casey Mears.
In early 2010 though, it seemed Harvick was primed to return to his winning ways, taking the checkers in the aforementioned Clash before leading at the end of the first overtime caution in the Daytona 500.
Had this happened in any previous year, Harvick would have claimed his second Daytona 500 victory and ended his winless drought at 107, but a newly-instituted policy gave the field at least three attempts at overtime.
In the end, Jamie McMurray stole the day from Harvick and the trophy, winning his first Daytona 500 with Chip Ganassi Racing while The Closer failed to close the deal, ending up seventh.
The next race may have provided an even stronger punch to the gut as the hungry driver closed in on four-time defending Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson at his home track of Auto Club Speedway late in the going.
Unfortunately for The Closer, the Shell Chevy was unable to overcome the Lowe’s car, a familiar tale over the past few years.
He gruffly remarked in a post-race interview that the 48 team must have a “golden horseshoe stuck up their a**” from dominating year after year.
Finishes of 11th or better in the first five races moved the 29 car to the top of the points race for the first time since that 2007 Daytona 500 victory, but a mechanical issue foiled a promising run at Martinsville in the first race of the rear spoiler’s return, which was followed by a 13th at Phoenix and a seventh at Texas.
Heading to the first superspeedway race to feature rear spoilers since “This Is Why I’m Hot” and “What I’ve Done” dominated the airwaves, Harvick and the RCR bunch qualified an impressive fourth, looking to further their march back towards the top spot in points.
As Kevin and the rest of the field weaved around during their pace laps, Fox Sports decided to rub it in that he hadn’t won in 115 races, but pit reporter Dick Berggren was assured that “Hungry not Happy” Harvick would stay humble pre-race, acknowledging anyone in the field had a chance to win.
The field took the green with Harvick lining up behind Matt Kenseth, shoving the 17 Valvoline Ford Fusion for the entire first lap to maintain his fourth position.
He continued to bide his time behind the 2003 champion until lap 5 where The Closer showed his hand for later, flying out to a nearly two-second advantage before blowing by Kenseth in the trioval to get five bonus points for leading a lap.
(Editor’s note: Lead-lap points and most-laps-led points are really cool. Please bring those back!)
By turn 3 of the following lap, the pack engulfed the top duo as the tandem of Denny Hamlin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. swept by along with the rest of the frontrunners on the outside.
At the other end of the field, Juan Pablo Montoya and Jamie McMurray fell out of the lead draft, which is normally something to be concerned about at superspeedways. Thanks to a competition caution, the Chip Ganassi Racing cars stayed on the lead lap.
Oddly enough, the car just three spots ahead of him is the same one that led the fifth lap.
When the race got back going, Harvick held a steady wheel and hung out at the end of the lead draft outside of the top-30 along with McMurray, a strategy devised by Harvick and crew chief Gil Martin.
Mike Joy referred to Jimmie Johnson as Kyle Busch’s “nemesis, archenemy for the championship” near the 50-lap mark while Harvick and McMurray’s pod of cars fought for screen time on extended shots of the leaders, barely popping into frame.
Lap 64 brought the first group of cars down for green-flag pit stops with a large swath of cars — including the 1 and 29 — bringing their machines down for service the next lap.
During that sequence, Marcos Ambrose and Brad Keselowski brought the 47 car back down pit road for a punctured tire as the 12 car suffered from a slow stop due to the contact.
The Harvick-McMurray pod added some new members that suffered from slower stops that dropped them from the main pack.
However, that all changed when Michael Waltrip scraped the wall off of turn 4 on lap 76, spurring a chain reaction that ended with Denny Hamlin bringing out the first caution for cause by lazily spinning into the trioval.
Instead of a shakeup, the pod mostly remained where they were before the caution after pit stops and continued to hang back to start the next run in an effort to avoid The Big One.
This decision bore immediate fruit as Kyle Busch gave a poor bump in the trioval to Johnny Sauter, darting the 36 into the path of Kurt Busch’s No. 2 Miller Lite mobile and collecting the likes of Max Papis, Matt Kenseth, Elliott Sadler, David Stremme, Michael Waltrip, Paul Menard, and Sam Hornish Jr.
Meanwhile, the pod persevered, toptoeing through the wreckage at a snail’s pace.
McMurray and Harvick stuck to the plan to stay in the race by hanging out in the rear while a caution flew for Regan Smith’s Furniture Row Chevy suffering a mechanical failure on lap 101.
The race went green for the next 71 laps after going green on lap 106. During this run, someone’s straw hat blew onto the race track, which the broadcast clarified did not belong to car owner Jack Roush.
Not long after, Jeff Gordon nearly jumped to the lead, which made Larry McReynolds call him “Big Daddy” for some reason — a moniker we’d hear again at Martinsville the next spring.
(Editor’s Note: I miss when Fox was more like this.)
When the race hit 50 laps to go, The Closer asserted himself again at the front of the field, coming from outside the top-20 to take the runner-up spot while pushing a rebounding Denny Hamlin’s FedEx Toyota like his life depended on it.
Just five laps later, Harvick followed Hamlin again to try overtaking David Ragan at the front; unfortunately for The Closer, the 11 blended back in front of Ragan before Harvick could complete the pass, sinking the Shell Impala back into the midpack.
Harvick brought the 29 car down pit road one more time on lap 147 where his Pennzoil posse got to work, filling the car full of Sunoco fuel and getting him out without a penalty. When everything cycled through, Juan Pablo Montoya shot to the lead with none other than his teammate giving him a boost.
The pack — growing more fiendish by the second — swallowed the Tums and Bass Pro Shops machines, and McMurray nearly put an early end to his day by taking to the apron through the trioval to make a pass. Luckily, the savvy veteran backed off and gave back the position to prevent a pass-through penalty.
As the race counted down to 20 laps remaining, McMurray rode in the top-3 while Harvick cruised in 10th, but a bad push from David Reutimann to Bobby Labonte altered the complexion of the race.
A group of nine lead-lap runners stayed out under this caution, including the CGR duo and RCR’s flagship car. During this caution, Harvick can be seen shutting his engine off and running on the apron to save fuel.
McMurray took the restart with nine to go as the leader while Harvick occupied the outside of the third row. Greg Biffle throttled up and shoved McMurray out to the lead, covering off the top lane for the next couple of laps before every voice in Alabama hit their highest pitch of the weekend.
Tony Stewart found his way to the point with Dale Jr. giving him a mega shove around the 2.66-mile superspeedway. The 88 found itself in the midst of a significant dry spell as well, so his fans went absolutely berserk once he entered the fray late.
Coming to six laps to go, a crash brewed from the backstretch when Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon made contact when Johnson tried to cover a major run from his mentor.
Gordon hit the apron, creating a nervous logjam into turn 3. The resulting logjam ended in tears for Jeff Burton as the Cat car clipped the Mike Bliss machine, sending him into the path of Scott Speed and to the dismay of many, the 24 car.
The timing of the caution and extensive cleanup for Gordon’s debris sent the race into its first Green-White-Checkered where Harvick lined up three cars behind McMurray. A great shove from Denny Hamlin vaulted Harvick to fifth when The Big One struck once more.
The crash kicked off when Ryan Newman slid into the corner on Joey Logano’s fender on the outside of three other cars. Newman’s Stewart-Haas Chevy careened into oncoming traffic, wiping out Kasey Kahne, Sadler, Ambrose, Labonte, Hornish, and Vickers.
Fuel became a growing concern on pit road as practically every car queued up on the apron under yellow.
Another green-white-checkered rolled on with McMurray controlling the bottom with Montoya and Harvick behind him while Biffle, Stewart, and Earnhardt filled the top lane.
Biffle’s car sputtered for half of a lap while the bottom lane took advantage, bumping Harvick up to third by the time Biffle and Johnson collided in the middle of the backstretch, removing both cars from contention.
For the final green-white-checkered attempt, CGR locked out the front row with McMurray on the bottom and JPM taking tops. Harvick and Hamlin occupied row 2 while Martin Truex Jr. — another driver winless since 2007 — and Kyle Busch sat behind them.
The tandem of Montoya and Hamlin held the lead for much of the lap on the top, but a surge through turn 3 by the 1 and 29 shot them out to the lead to battle it out amongst themselves.
With the pack scrambling behind them, McMurray and Harvick screamed away down the backstretch, just like they had done all day, except this time it was for first instead of 31st.
McMurray did well to hold the move off through the entry of the trioval where Harvick slipped under Kenseth on lap 5, but midway through the trioval, The Closer struck.
The bright yellow Pennzoil machine flashed to the inside of McMurray, and from there, it was a drag race, something The Closer never loses.
As the tandem crossed the finish line side-by-side, Darrell Waltrip exclaimed as Mike Joy declared Harvick the winner for the first time since the rollout of the first iPhone.
The win snapped his 115-race winless streak and oddly put him in the top-5 in points in all three national series (it was a much different time!) The margin of victory came out to just .012 seconds.
In victory lane, The Closer hopped out of his car and said to Fox Sports’ Krista Voda, “Everything just played out perfect for us today. We had a plan to ride in the back, wait until 50 laps to go, and then, really push forward after that.”
The win was simply The Closer at his absolute best, making his biggest comeback at America’s biggest superspeedway.
(Top Photo Credit: Jason Smith/Getty Images)
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