The Foxwoods Resort Casino 301 would start on Sunday with quite a few fast race cars in the back of the field, due to issues in practice and qualifying. Most notably, Alex Bowman of Hendrick Motorsports would be on his third car of the weekend, due to mechanical issues on his primary car and wrecking his backup car in practice. Bowman would be driving the backup car of Jimmie Johnson, his teammate at Hendrick Motorsports.
Another driver forced to use a backup car because of an incident in practice would be Denny Hamlin, driver of the number 11 FedEx Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing. Most of the time backup cars are not as quick as the primary car, because most of the prep work is done on the primary car during practice to fine-tune it for the race. However, this backup car for Hamlin was very quick. Driving through the field with ease, Hamlin was able to lead 113 laps of a possible 301 and came just short of winning his third race of the season despite making contact with Kevin Harvick on two separate occasions on the final lap.
"I wanted to just tap him there, I wanted to give him a fair shot," said Hamlin on why he didn't hit Harvick a little harder to secure the victory for his team.
"Good hard racing, and luckily today we came out on the right side of it," said Harvick on the battle with Hamlin. At this point in the 2018 season, Kevin Harvick had already won six races. The win on Sunday would be just the first for his Stewart Haas Racing Mustang in the 2019 season. "It's been one of those years. We started off not where we needed to be. Everybody put their heads down and started changing things. It takes a long time to change directions." Harvick and his number four have been upfront and in contention to win races this season, but couldn't seem to close the deal.
A late-race call from Crew Chief Rodney Childers got Harvick the track position he needed, and he never looked back. Leading for a total of 46 laps, Harvick put his Busch Beer National Forest Foundation Ford in Victory Lane.
The New England region is well known for its fishing and seafood, so naturally, the trophy for winning the Cup Series race in New Hampshire is a lobster. Harvick's son, Keelan, told his father before the race that if he won the race, that he wanted to kiss the lobster in Victory Lane. Keelan got his wish.
With Harvick and Hamlin finishing first and second, Erik Jones, Ryan Blaney, and Matt DiBenedetto rounded out the top five. Some other notable finishes were Kyle Busch in eighth, Chase Elliott in 29th, Johnson in 30th, and Austin Dillon in 32nd after blowing two right front tires.
The Cup Series travels to the beautiful Pocono Raceway next week, as you will be able to catch the coverage of the Gander RV 400 live on NBCSN at 3 P.M. Eastern time.
