Harvick Wraps Up First Series Title

Kevin Harvick capped his return to North Carolina Speedway by winning the Busch series championship Saturday, overshadowing Kenny Wallace’s victory in the Sam’s Club 200.

Harvick, who made his first Winston Cup start at Rockingham, N.C., in February as the replacement driver for the late Dale Earnhardt, finished fifth to lock up his first title and give car owner Richard Childress championships in all three of NASCAR’s top series.

It capped a season in which Harvick, 25, was supposed to run only the Busch schedule but was pushed into running both series after Earnhardt’s death in the season-opening Daytona 500.

“We’ve had our ups and downs this year, but this makes it all worth it,” Harvick said. “Over the summer months, a lot of people said we couldn’t do it. Well, we did it and the best we can do at this point is dedicate it to Dale Earnhardt.”

Harvick came into the race with a 198-point lead over 2000 series champion Jeff Green and a handful of scenarios that could have given him the title. Green winning the race would have made it very difficult, and up until the final lap it as if that would happen.

Green led 121 of the 187 laps, but elected not to come in for gas when the caution flag came out with five laps to go because of a three-car accident. After a brief red-flag delay to clean the track, the field ran three laps under yellow with Green the only one of the nine drivers on the lead lap not to come in for a quick stop.

The risky move backfired when Green ran out of gas on the restart and Wallace and the field zipped past him. Green coasted to the finish line in ninth place, falling 205 points behind Harvick--too many to make up at next week’s season finale.

Wallace won for the ninth time but the first time since 1996, a span of 66 Busch races. But his win was lost amid the celebration by Childress and Harvick, who is on the verge of becoming the first driver in NASCAR history to run a full Winston Cup and Busch schedule.

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Chatsworth’s Tommy Fry survived the longest race of the Food 4 Less Super Late Model Series season as he won the Southern California Pipe Trades 200-lap main event in front of 5,612 at Irwindale Speedway.

Fry caught Oak Hills’ Tony Green on Lap 183 and held the lead for the last 17 laps to win. Bakersfield’s Mike Duncan, the 2000 Winston West Series Rookie of the Year, held off Greg Voigt for third.

The Ultra Wheel Super Truck Series concluded its Southwest Region series with a 100-lap wire-to-wire main event victory by Mission Viejo’s Reggie Church.

Church held off Temecula’s Jim McGill by 0.546 seconds, with Yorba Linda’s Jim Kondziela in third.

Southwestern Region champion Dave Blankenship finished ninth, having already wrapped up the title in the previous race.