Kevin Harvick’s sixth win gives bump to rivalry with Kyle Busch

8:02 am | July 24, 2018 | Go to Source | Author:

11:15 AM ET

Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch have combined to win 11 of the 20 Cup Series races this season, and at New Hampshire they avoided the raindrops to finish first and second, respectively.

But even though the pair has won more than half of the races this season, Sunday was their most important race because it added some animosity to this championship battle.

If Harvick and Busch (along with Martin Truex Jr.) are going to continue to be consistently be battling it out for wins, you want to see a healthy rivalry. I don’t think anybody would mind seeing the two of them racing every week for wins if it results in hard racing like we’ve seen recently at Kentucky and New Hampshire.

Harvick bumped his way past Busch to set a career-high with his sixth win. But it was statistically significant in other ways as well. Let’s count them up!

Six out of 20 ain’t bad

Harvick won the 20th race of the season to set a new career-high with six victories. That’s one more than he won in his 2014 championship season — and we still have 16 races remaining this season.

Only one other driver since 2000 has won at least six times in the first 20 races of the season. That was Kyle Busch in 2008. But Harvick (who didn’t win in 2008, by the way), doesn’t want to see his season go exactly like Busch’s 2008. Busch won eight of the first 22 races but cooled off tremendously in the playoffs, failed to win again after Aug. 10 and finished 10th in points.

Before Harvick and Busch, the last driver to accumulate six wins 20 or fewer races into the season was Jeff Gordon, who did it three straight years from 1996-98.

Before that, the previous three instances all belonged to Dale Earnhardt, in his excellent 1987, 1990 and 1993 seasons.

Harvick joins the party late

Harvick leads the series in laps led this season and is the only driver to crack the 1,000 mark so far. But he led only 12 laps in his Loudon victory.

Happy Harvick has put up some impressive laps-led numbers recently, going over 2,000 in 2014 and 2015, so it’s easy to get that he has been the king of winning races despite sometimes not leading much.

Harvick has 10 career victories when leading 15 or fewer laps. Going back to 1980, only one driver has more such victories: that would be Jimmie Johnson, who has 13 such wins (but also nearly twice as many career wins overall).

To compare, the Cup Series all-time wins leader, Richard Petty, had eight such wins.

The rest of Stewart-Haas still waits

Kurt Busch has had some very high highs during his NASCAR career. The 2004 series champion. The 2017 Daytona 500 winner. But since that Daytona 500, Busch is winless in 55 races. And it’s not often that a 500 winner has to wait that long to win another race.

That winless streak marks the fourth-longest for a driver following a 500 victory.

The good news? He could be like Harvick, who didn’t win again for 115 races after winning it in 2007 but then rediscovered his mojo. The bad? Trevor Bayne is 0-for-178 since winning it in 2011.

Then there’s Aric Almirola, who had the self-described best car in Sunday’s race. He’s started 139 races since his only career win at Daytona (Coke Zero 400) in 2014. But if he’s looking for inspiration, he doesn’t have to go far.

Right across the shop is Clint Bowyer, who earlier this season snapped a 190-race winless streak, the third-longest span between wins in series history.

That trails only a 226-race slump by Bill Elliott from 1994-2001 and a 218-race stretch by Truex from 2007-13.