Kevin Harvick’s dominance in NASCAR’s west coast swing continued with a win at the NASCAR XFINITY Series Drive4Clots.com 300. Harvick pulled away from Brendan Gaughan within the final laps to capture his first XFINITY Series win at Auto Club Speedway.
Harvick dominated the race, leading 100 of the 150 laps. He was also the only Cup Series driver to finish among the top five. The win was also his 46th XFINITY Series career win.
“I’m just a lucky guy to be piloting really fast cars,” said Harvick in Victory Lane. “We’ve just got to keep riding the wave.”
Harvick had also won the XFINITY race at Atlanta earlier in the season.
Closing out the top five in Fontana where Erik Jones, Chase Elliott and Chris Buescher. Seven of the top 10 finishers were NASCAR XFINITY Series regulars.
After the final restart, Gaughan had been gaining spots and moving closer to Harvick. At the end 3.317 seconds separated the two.
“I would have loved one shot at a restart, just to see if I still had something for him,” said Gaughan after the race.
12 Sprint Cup Series drivers competed in Saturday’s race in preparation for Sunday’s Auto Club 400.
During NASCAR’s west coast swing – with races at Las Vegas and Phoenix – Harvick has dominated the Cup Series races. Saturday’s race was his first in the XFINITY Series during the west coast race weekends. Harvick has a chance to go for three wins in a row on Sunday in the Cup Series.
The XFINITY Series will be going on a break until the race at Texas Motor Speedway on April 10 – the first night race of the year.
Heading into the break Ty Dillon remains as the points leader, with a five point lead over Buescher. Defending series champion Elliott sits in third.
