Truck race winner Kevin Harvick enjoys stellar night in Phoenix - as both owner and driver
Kevin Harvick celebrates his victory in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Lucas Oil 150 at Phoenix International Raceway Friday night. // Ivan Veldhuizen, NASCAR Scene
Related content: Kevin Harvick Inc.'s Ron Hornaday wins 2009 Truck series championship
AVONDALE, Ariz. – Kevin Harvick had two reasons to celebrate after the Lucas Oil 150 Friday night at Phoenix International Raceway.
For starters, the owner/driver captured his fourth career win at PIR, outlasting a hard-charging Kyle Busch in a green-white-checkered finish that ended when a final caution halted the race at lap 151.
But perhaps more importantly, Harvick saw his driver, Ron Hornaday, wrap up the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship with a fourth-place finish.
Hornaday exited Phoenix with a 215-point lead over second-place Matt Crafton, who finished eighth. One race remains to be contested, the Nov. 20th finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Harvick, who qualified second and led 58 laps, had to rally from the night’s first incident on lap 7 when his truck slid up and into the side of Billy Ballew Motorsports' Aric Almirola.
Despite the setback, which left Harvick deep in the field, he was able to slowly work his way through traffic and back into contention.
Almirola, Hornaday and pole winner Johnny Sauter completed the top five. Sixth through 10th went to Randy Moss Motorsports' Mike Skinner, HT Motorsports' Mike Bliss, ThorSport Racing's Crafton, HT's David Starr and Wyler Racing's Stacy Compton.
“This place has been great to us,” Harvick said. “To see Hornaday lock up the championship and [us] to win the race, I don’t know that you could script it much better than that.
“I thought I got in oil … I had about spun out the lap before that. It just kind of took me awhile to get back in the swing of things.”
The win was the second of the season for Harvick and the fifth of his career.
Busch, a seven-time winner in the series this season, said he knew Harvick would be strong.
“I expected the [No.] 4 truck [of Harvick] to be really good and he was,” Busch said. “We made a gain on it from last year to this year. … Overall, our truck was good, we led some laps and tried to go for the win. We just didn’t quite have enough on those last restarts there.”
The win came in Harvick's 100th career start in the NASCAR Truck series.
