May 3, 2021 | By Lee Spencer

Leaving Kansas in one piece pays off for Kevin Harvick and other Cup contenders

Rather than rail on the screw-ups from some of NASCAR’s top stars at Kansas Speedway, let’s use this motivational Monday to shed light on the positives.

While it’s too early to predict a changing of the guard in stock car’s top tour, a new crop of drivers continues to thrust itself into the conversation.

And 2021 continues to be the gift season that keeps on giving when it comes to different Cup winners.

On Sunday, the NASCAR Cup Series feted a 10th different winner in 11 races after a stellar end game executed by Kyle Busch in the Buschy McBusch Race 400. If Kevin Harvick can’t win his sponsor’s race, then one of the Busch brothers needed to take the checkers. So why not the one celebrating a birthday? Props to older brother Kurt for not only having beers waiting for his sibling as he arrived at the FBO, but a full mariachi band to get the party started.

Speaking of Harvick, could the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing team finally be turning its fortunes around? Harvick posted a season-high second-place finish on Sunday—his second consecutive top-five. Although he never led a lap, Harvick maintained a presence within the top 10, and mainly the top five, for most of the race. No, the No. 4 Ford was not nearly as sporty as Kyle Larson or Kyle Busch or even the Team Penske Fords of Brad Keselowski and Ryan Blaney. But with the exception of his pit crew’s tire violation on Lap 230, Harvick was in contention for most of the race. Fortunately, the rash of cautions over the final 37 circuits enabled the former champion to overcome adversity and soldier on to his first podium finish of the season.

“We had the right pit strategy once the cautions came out there,” Harvick said. “We had the pit road penalty and came in for tires and Rodney made a great call of coming back in to put tires on and that kind of put us on the offense. We were able to be really aggressive on the two restarts we had at the end and were able to make up some ground…We made a few mistakes, but we made our car better throughout the whole day and were more competitive than we had been in the last couple mile-and-a-half races.”

Keselowski and Matt DiBenedetto also scored back-to-back top-fives after Sunday’s run in the Sunflower State. While that level of performance is expected from Special K, DiBenedetto’s growth at the Cup level is long overdue but welcomed. While both drivers are in contract years, DiBenedetto already knows he’s moving on. Still, there doesn’t seem to be any urgency for the soon-to-be 30-year-old driver. Maybe the rumors of Guido moving to a second car at 23XI Racing are true. Regardless, it’s good to see some consistency for Matty D and the beloved Wood Brothers.

“Holy cow, I’m mentally tired,” said DiBenedetto after Sunday’s contest. “That was wild. Every restart was insane. That’s how Kansas is because you run from the bottom to the top. I’ve got to give a lot of credit again, I know I do it a lot, but my spotter Doug Campbell does an excellent job. My team did a great job today. We started the race and I was like, ‘Oh, we’re not very good.’  We were just hanging on and we had to defend all day and then to come home with a fourth is excellent…Man, we’re on a roll—another top five.”

Perhaps the biggest surprise this season has been the lack of press showered on the People’s Champ. While there’s no doubt that Larson was the class of the field on Sunday, Chase Elliott kept his nose clean and left Kansas with his fourth top-five finish of 2021. None of the HMS Chevys have led as many laps as Larson, whose 511 circuits at the point are second only to Denny Hamlin’s 744. And no other driver on the Cup tour has posted as many top-10 results as William Byron, who scored his ninth top 10 of the season. But after two rough weeks for Larson, Elliott has since leapfrogged over the No. 5 team and ranks second at HMS behind Byron.

“We were solid,” Elliott said. “We weren’t anything stellar, but definitely a step in the right direction from where we’ve been over the last three or four weeks…Proud of the effort and hopefully we can just keep this momentum going forward. Hopefully, we’ll be where we need to be soon.”

Never count out Tyler Reddick on an intermediate track. Why? No one rips the top like Reddick—and Kansas was no exception. With this kid’s huge heart and cheerleaders like Randall Burnett and spotter Derek Kneeland to keep him pumped up through the course of races, Reddick’s only limitation is his equipment which seems to be improving. Case in point: Reddick has four top 10s in his last five starts at a variety of venues from dirt to superspeedways and Sunday’s 1.5-miler. Even following a tire penalty on Lap 212, Reddick rebounded to finish seventh and score 41 points for his effort.

“We had a really strong No. 8 Childress Vineyards Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE today at Kansas Speedway, which we used to grab valuable stage points all throughout the day and top it all off with a seventh-place finish,” Reddick said. “I was able to run the wall really well during the early stages of the race, which really helped keep our track position and earn those stage points…It was a good day for us. We earned the most stage points we have all year today and got out of there with a top-10 finish. The focus will now turn to Darlington Raceway, which is another good track for us, so I'm excited about that.”

For just the second time this season, Chris Buescher led laps and finished with a top-10 result. Crew chief Luke Lambert had to be creative to transform what appeared to be a top-20 car at the start of the contest to an eighth-place finish. When the leaders pitted during the final stage, Buescher remained on track and took the lead on Lap 213. Staying out on old tires was a gamble that eventually paid off for the No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing team.

“That was a good ending for autoTempest Ford Mustang group,” Buescher said. “It was a fight all day. We worked hard at it and everybody did a great job to get us home with a top-10. It’s a respectable finish from where we started. We kept working on it and getting better. It’s a fun race track. Kansas is always fun being able to move around and have options. The late-race restarts were pretty wild. We came out in one piece and the car is clean and I am just glad to be able to get autoTempest their first top-10 in NASCAR.”