HOMESTEAD, Fla.—Kevin Harvick roared past Timothy Peters moments after a Lap 135 restart and pulled away to win Friday night’s Ford 200 Camping World Truck Series race in a green-white-checkered-flag finish at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“That’s the way to put an end to a year, right there!” Harvick shrieked into the radio as he crossed the line. The victory was Harvick’s second in a row, his third in six starts this year and the sixth of his career. Matt Crafton finished second and Colin Braun third, as both drivers also passed Peters, who ran fourth, on the final two-lap dash.
Harvick, who came to the pits for tires under the final caution on Lap 129 of 136, was a double winner Friday night, given that the truck he fields for Ron Hornaday locked up the series owners’ championship with an eighth-place finish. Hornaday clinched his record fourth drivers’ championship last Friday at Phoenix.
“Our goal was to go out and lead the most laps and win the race,” said Harvick, who led 108 of the 136 laps. “I think everybody was concerned about their tires [late in the race], and there weren’t very many trucks on the lead lap, so we came down for four tires [while Peters remained on the track].
“I thought the 17 [Peters] was going to be a sitting duck there, [and] luckily it all worked out.”
Harvick pitted for fuel on Lap 114 and regained the lead eight laps later when Aric Almirola made his final pit stop. After the field cycled through, Harvick quickly opened an advantage of more than 4 seconds over Peters and expanded the margin until Ryan Sieg’s spin caused the fourth caution of the race and bunched the field.
Todd Bodine came home fifth, followed by Mike Skinner, David Starr, Hornaday, Johnny Sauter and T.J. Bell.
Kevin Harvick Inc. came in with a 60-point lead over Billy Ballew Motorsports in the owners’ standings, but thanks to Kyle Busch’s worst-to-first climb, they were even at the midpoint Friday night.
Busch qualified eighth, then had to start at the back of the 36-truck pack because of an engine change.
Ordinarily, that might be devastating. For Busch, who came in with 11 top-five finishes in 14 Truck Series starts this season, all the lost ground was made up in about 10 minutes.
Instead, his real trouble came later.
Busch passed 10 trucks on the first lap alone, 18—half the field—in the first three laps and was 11th by the time the drivers crossed the finish line for the seventh time. By Lap 25, he was fourth, and when the first caution flag came out 18 minutes into the race, Busch was in second place, trailing only Harvick.
Meanwhile, Hornaday’s No. 33 settled in nicely, not far from the lead but well ahead of the pack, teetering around fifth for much of the early going.
“We knew we needed to go out and beat Kyle,” Harvick said. “We knew that Hornaday needed to race safe and do what he needed to do to win the owners’ championship. Obviously, he won the drivers’ championship last week.
Busch’s hopes of winning the owners’ championship in Ballew’s No. 51 Toyota disappeared on Lap 82, when Busch came to the pits to replace a cut tire. To compound the problem, Busch had to serve a pass-through penalty when his crew failed to carry the damaged tire to the pit wall before Busch left the stall.
It dropped him to 22nd, two laps down and at that point, an owners’ race that was even a few moments earlier saw KHI holding a 108-point advantage. Busch finished 13th, one lap off the lead.