Kevin Harvick beats Carl Edwards by 0.01 seconds at Phoenix
Well, the winner of this race was predictable. But damn, the finish sure wasn’t.
Kevin Harvick held off Carl Edwards in an amazing last half lap at Phoenix to win by mere inches. Edwards got underneath Harvick in turns 3 and 4 and the two cars bounced off each other multiple times exiting turn 4. The final piece of contact pushed Harvick’s car past Edwards’ by 0.01 seconds.
It’s the second finish of 0.01 seconds in the Sprint Cup Series in 2016. Denny Hamlin beat Martin Truex Jr. by the same margin in the Daytona 500.
“I should have wrecked him,” Edwards joked after the race. “Those guys were doing a great job all day. They hung on with those tires. But we were faster, so I thought ‘Man, I’ll just move him out of the way and get by.’ I just didn’t move him far enough. And the he got up to the door and I was trying to time it, I thought ‘I think he’s going to beat me’ so I tried to sideswipe him before he got there but I needed to be in front of his front tire.”
Harvick has won five of the last six races at Phoenix and six of the last eight. He was leading with five laps to go when Kasey Kahne hit the wall after he cut a right front tire. Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Austin Dillon didn’t pit. Edwards was the first car to pit and took two fresh tires.
Edwards got to second immediately off the restart and charged towards Harvick on the last lap. Without fresh tires, the race was all Harvick’s. But Edwards had a speed advantage and came ohsoclose to making it work for him.
“Well I knew he was better in 3 and 4, that was not the car I wanted to see behind me,” Harvick said. “I knew I could beat him down there [in turns 1 and 2] and I tried to protect the bottom in 3 and 4 and I just missed the bottom with all the rubber buildup on the tires and everything. All in all I knew it was going to be on defense down there. I got up too high and wasn’t able to stay on the bottom like I wanted to and he got into me — like he should have — and I knew I needed to get a good run off the corner and I was going to have to get in his door and it worked out just barely.”
Harvick didn’t seize control of the race until the second half. But when he did, his car was really damn good. On the next-to-last restart Harvick cruised past Edwards when the two were on equal tires. Had the caution not come out for Kahne’s crash, Harvick would have won the race easily over Earnhardt Jr.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
