- Kevin Harvick won the contest, after an intense battle with Alex Bowman.
- It was his 50th win for the Stewart-Haas Racing team.
- NASCAR passed the test yesterday, organizing the first race since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out successfully.
- The organization aims to make the events more frequent now, as lockdown measures start to ease.
Harvick’s 50th Win for Stewart-Haas Racing
Harvick was 2.154 seconds ahead of Alex Bowman, who was troubling the rival for a long period. It was a pity that the fans didn’t have a chance to see this battle. The race at Darlington Raceway was organized without the spectators, due to the measures imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet, that had little influence on the current leader in the championship, who was masterful from the start until the end. This was his first victory of the season, and the first here after six years.
It also presented a nice landmark in his career, as it was the 50th win recorded as a part of the Stewart-Haas Racing team. He is now tied with Hall of Famers Junior Johnson and Ned Jarrett in the 12th place on the NASCAR All-time victories list.
“The first thing I want to do is thank everybody from NASCAR, all the teams, the whole industry, for getting us back on the race track,” said Harvick.
He now has 28 points more than Bowman in the NASCAR Cup Series standings. Harvick collected 210, Bowman has 190, while Joey Logano, who finished 18th, sits at 185.
Behind Bowman was Kurt Busch, and Bowman’s teammate from Hendricks Motorsports’ Chase Elliot ended fourth.
This event was called Real Heroes 400 and was dedicated to all the health workers who were relentlessly fighting COVID-19 virus, trying to save and protect the lives of the people all over the USA. Instead of drivers’ names written on the cars, the names of health care workers appeared as a gesture of respect and support in these harsh times.
Test Passed for NASCAR
A substantial part of the public had some doubts about this event, and in general, about the entire concept, NASCAR had when it comes to organizing the races in this hard time.
Yet, there wasn’t a single mistake on and off the track during the whole program. Everything was perfect. Each car was limited to 16 crew members, all of them, along with the drivers, were tested for COVID-19, and so far, nobody was positive. So pretty much this was a massive success for NASCAR.
The organization is now aiming to take this to another level. The task force created a health plan which was recently approved by the authorities in South and North Carolina, making it possible to organize contests there.
The plan is to have seven races over the next 11 days, and speed up the competition. There are suggestions that we might see 20 events in the next month, all of them in the states who are releasing the lockdown measures.
Coca-Cola 600 comes up next week at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
