Kevin Harvick got his third-straight win at Phoenix International Raceway on Sunday, and it's a win that gives him a chance to run for the Sprint Cup Series title.
Harvick's win guaranteed him a spot in NASCAR's final four to race for the championship on November 16 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The three other drivers joining Harvick are Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano and Ryan Newman, who made a banzai last lap pass to sneak in ahead of Jeff Gordon.
Gordon, Brad Keselowski, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards were eliminated from the Chase.
While Harvick sprinted away with the lead of the race from Gordon with 12 laps to go after the race's final restart, Newman lost two spots. It put him in a tie with Gordon for the final spot to advance to Homestead, assuming Harvick would win the race and Logano and Hamlin would maintain their positions.
Because of Gordon's second-place finish in the first race of the third round at Martinsville two weeks ago, he had the tiebreaker. Newman had to finish a point ahead of Gordon, and to do it, he needed to pass Kyle Larson on the final lap.
Newman drove his car into turn three and four onto the apron as far as he could and his car slid up into Larson's. Larson's car slid up out of the groove and into the wall. Newman had the spot on the track and a chance to race for the championship.
"I just gave it my all and they paved (the apron) I guess for a reason," Newman said. "And they didn't make any rules that said we couldn't use it. A great team effort today. We did not have the race car, we had horrible restarts, I did not have track position with this Cat Mining Chevrolet when we needed to but in the end we fought back hard."
"Did what we had to. As clean as I possibly could. I wasn't proud of it, but I'll do what I got to to make it to this next round. That little boy has got a lot of things coming in this sport and he used me up at Eldora in a truck race a couple years ago, so from my standpoint I call it even. I think if he was in my position, he would have done the same thing."
After climbing from his car, Gordon expounded on the merits of clean racing. Last week, Gordon went from second to 29th at Texas after contact with Brad Keselowski while racing for the lead late in the race. Sunday, he was eliminated when Newman used Larson as a buffer.
"That's disappointing. We've got a lot to hold our heads up high about, the way that we raced this race, the whole Chase and the season. We raced hard, we raced together as a team, but I hope we taught somebody that you can race clean and still go out there and give it your best. That you don't have to go out there and wreck people to make it in the Chase or win the championship."
"I'm afraid if it was that ugly these last couple weeks it's going to get really ugly next week."
Gordon simply didn't have a chance to make a move on Harvick for the win. The gap Harvick had on Gordon in the final laps never closed, and it was fitting. Harvick was by far the day's most dominant driver. He led the most laps and was nearly untouchable.
"I guess that's what it feels like to hit a walk-off in the extra innings there," Harvick said.
The dominance was a good thing, too. Harvick entered the day eighth among the eight drivers vying for the final four spots and because none of the eight had porous finishes, had Harvick finished second, he wouldn't have made it to Homestead eligible for the title.
"I could tell that we were probably going to have to win because everyone was running up in the front of the pack that we were racing against," Harvick said. "So that was our goal coming in here and that's really the goal every time you come to Phoenix."
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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