{"id":15534,"date":"2018-03-18T18:49:52","date_gmt":"2018-03-18T23:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=15534"},"modified":"2018-03-18T22:23:46","modified_gmt":"2018-03-19T03:23:46","slug":"nascar-sunday-auto-club-speedway-notebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/03\/18\/nascar-sunday-auto-club-speedway-notebook\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Sunday Auto Club Speedway Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

Cooler heads prevail after Harvick-Larson wreck<\/b><\/p>\n

FONTANA, Calif. \u2013 Make no mistake\u2014there were heated words on the radios of Kyle Larson<\/strong> and Kevin Harvick<\/strong> after their collision on the backstretch on Lap 38 of Sunday\u2019s Auto Club 400 that ended Harvick\u2019s bid to win a fourth straight Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> race.<\/p>\n

Harvick wondered aloud what Larson was doing when the driver of the No. 42 Chevrolet turned up the track after Harvick moved down to side-draft the Chip Ganassi Racing machine.<\/p>\n

Larson questioned why Harvick would race him so hard for position so early in a 200-lap event.<\/p>\n

But after Larson recovered to run second to race winner Martin Truex Jr., and Harvick rolled home 35th in a heavily damaged car, the drivers were far more conciliatory.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went down to side-draft, and he (Larson) was coming up and we touched, and it just knocked the thing to the right and spun out,\u201d Harvick said after watching the video replay. \u201cI don\u2019t know that it\u2019s his fault. I think that\u2019s my fault for coming down the race track right there and trying to side-draft, and then as we touch it just came back up the race track. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was just trying to get a little too much right there. I knew the stage was coming (to an end). I\u2019ve just got to thank all of my guys. They did a great job on our Busch Beer Ford, and it was just my fault back there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was just a dumb mistake on my part…  The race car was there. It was just a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Larson likewise took a more amicable tone after his runner-up result.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were racing really hard, and I was better than him in (Turns) 3 and 4, and he was better than me in (Turns) 1 and 2,\u201d Larson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would side-draft him down the frontstretch, and he would side draft me down the backstretch, and I don\u2019t know if he was just coming down to side draft me or what, but we made contact and it spun his car to the right. So you never want to make contact with anybody, but all in all it was a good day for our DC Solar Chevrolet team.\u201d<\/p>\n

KYLE BUSCH DISAPPOINTED WITH THIRD-PLACE RUN<\/b><\/p>\n

You couldn\u2019t call Sunday a bad day for Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Kyle Busch.<\/p>\n

After all, the driver of the No. 18 Toyota led 62 laps in Sunday\u2019s Auto Club 400, second only to race winner Martin Truex Jr. And though Busch finished third behind Truex and Kyle Larson, he held second place in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series standings, nine points behind Truex, who took over the lead.<\/p>\n

The problem was that Busch expected better after a strong showing in Saturday\u2019s practice. But clearly, his Toyota team has some catching up to do relative to Truex\u2019s squad at Furniture Row.<\/p>\n

Where was Busch\u2019s car losing time to Truex\u2019s?<\/p>\n

\u201cEverywhere,\u201d Busch said succinctly. \u201cJust thought we were closer than that, but obviously not. We were right on top of the 78 (Truex) Saturday. The first run, I thought we were really good and showed some strength, but from there on out showed no strength.\u201d<\/p>\n

Busch took the checkered flag more than 12 seconds behind Truex.<\/p>\n

DENNY HAMLIN SCORES ANOTHER QUIET TOP 10<\/b><\/p>\n

When Denny Hamlin finds some short-run speed, he\u2019ll be dangerous.<\/p>\n

Hamlin overcame a pit road snafu to finish sixth in Sunday\u2019s Auto Club 400, lowering his average finish through five Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races to 6.8. Hamlin is also sixth in the series standings after Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

But his team still has work to do to contend with the fastest cars in the series.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just had a mistake on our pit stop,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cI flew through my box again. Once I got that remedied, it looked like were some somewhere around a fourth- or fifth-place car-even a third-place at times. In the long run, we were exceptional, but we were just too slow on the short run to keep up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose guys would pull seven seconds on us, and we\u2019d maintain after that and gain a little. We were letting these guys stretch a little on us too much in the short run. Overall a good day for our FedEx Camry, but we wanted to get a top five there. We were really in it there at the end of the race with the leaders, but we didn\u2019t have enough time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service Cooler heads prevail after Harvick-Larson wreck FONTANA, Calif. \u2013 Make no mistake\u2014there were heated words on the radios of Kyle Larson and Kevin Harvick after their collision on the backstretch on Lap 38 of Sunday\u2019s Auto Club 400 that ended Harvick\u2019s bid to win a fourth straight Monster Energy NASCAR […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[401,399,16],"class_list":["post-15534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-auto-club-400","tag-auto-club-speedway","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/MENCS_ACS_JJPITSTOP_031818.jpg?fit=3185%2C2123","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-42y","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15536,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15534\/revisions\/15536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}