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Harvick in Chase with Michigan win

Kevin Harvick claimed his third victory of the season at Michigan and became the first driver to secure a place in this year's championship playoff

The Richard Childress Racing driver ran close to the wall all the way through the 400 miles as he made the most of the speed of his #29 Chevrolet on the high groove of the 2-mile oval.

He led 59 of the race's 200 laps, passing Denny Hamlin with ten laps to go after the Joe Gibbs racer put on a late challenge for victory after struggling during the first half of the race.

Harvick stayed on the track during the final caution to move up to second for what turned out to be the final restart of the race. Although he would lose second place to Hamlin, his superior speed on the long runs transpired as the race approached its closing stages.

Both him and Hamlin were able to overtake Tony Stewart for the lead, and Harvick then put the pressure on to reclaim the lead that he had held comfortably earlier in the race.

Hamlin tried to force his rival to pass him on the inside line, which allowed him to stay in the lead until Harvick eventually drove on the outside of the #11 Camry with 10 laps remaining.

Once in clean air Harvick pulled away to win for the first time at Michigan, a track where he admitted he had struggled for many years in the Sprint Cup series.

"This has been a very bad track for us and to come here and do what we did today says a lot about where RCR is; where our cars are and hopefully what we can do in the last 10 weeks of the season," said Harvick. "Really proud of everybody... It is a lot of fun right now."

Hamlin's second place was almost a victory for him after struggling for balance early in the race, running in the midfield until he was able to finally make progress thorough adjustments and the right strategy, despite electrical issues hampering him all throughout the race.

"We still just didn't have the speed that we needed," said Hamlin. "It seemed like the same as qualifying, just don't have that overall speed. It helped today that the conditions were a little bit worse and the speeds slowed down because of the sun. It helped us a little bit."

"I feel like if we had overcast conditions like we had during practice, I thought we were going to be in trouble."

Carl Edwards led a great showing from Roush Fenway Racing finishing third, right ahead of team-mates Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth. Biffle had looked the strongest of the three leading the most laps, all of them in the first half of the race. Edwards made a great final restart in which he was able to pass his team-mates as well as Stewart, who took sixth in the end.

"That's probably one of the strongest performances we've had as a team in a long time, it definitely is," said Edwards. "There at the end I felt like we were coming on. We had a very fast racecar. Greg was real fast. Matt was real fast.

"I think if we could have capitalised on those tyres, had a little bit of track position, maybe a little bit of a caution or something, we would have been really, really good."

Juan Pablo Montoya recovered after struggling with a loose car halfway through the race, taking four tyres on the penultimate caution while most of the leaders took two. That allowed him to run in the top-five close to the end although he would eventually lose out to the Roush Fenway trio in the final laps.

Joey Logano rounded out the top-10 but had to confront a furious Ryan Newman after making contact with him on lap 148.

The race was a disappointing one for Hendrick Motorsports with Jimmie Johnson finishing highest from the outfit in 12th after leading the race early. Jeff Gordon looked a strong contender also until a flat left-front tyre put him out of contention for victory.

Clint Bowyer was 13th at the line and moved back inside the top-12 in the standings, while Mark Martin hit the wall early, finishing down in 28th place and dropping out of the cut for the Chase, which takes place in three weeks' time.

Pos  Driver              Car        Laps
 1.  Kevin Harvick       Chevrolet   200
 2.  Denny Hamlin        Toyota      200
 3.  Carl Edwards        Ford        200
 4.  Greg Biffle         Ford        200
 5.  Matt Kenseth        Ford        200
 6.  Tony Stewart        Chevrolet   200
 7.  Juan Montoya        Chevrolet   200
 8.  Martin Truex Jr     Toyota      200
 9.  Elliott Sadler      Ford        200
10.  Joey Logano         Toyota      200
11.  David Ragan         Ford        200
12.  Jimmie Johnson      Chevrolet   200
13.  Clint Bowyer        Chevrolet   200
14.  Kasey Kahne         Ford        200
15.  Marcos Ambrose      Toyota      200
16.  David Reutimann     Toyota      200
17.  A.J. Allmendinger   Ford        200
18.  Kyle Busch          Toyota      200
19.  Dale Earnhardt Jr   Chevrolet   200
20.  Jamie McMurray      Chevrolet   200
21.  Regan Smith         Chevrolet   200
22.  Bill Elliott        Ford        200
23.  Ryan Newman         Chevrolet   200
24.  Jeff Burton         Chevrolet   200
25.  Scott Speed         Toyota      200
26.  Reed Sorenson       Toyota      200
27.  Jeff Gordon         Chevrolet   200
28.  Mark Martin         Chevrolet   200
29.  Patrick Carpentier  Ford        200
30.  Travis Kvapil       Ford        200
31.  Tony Raines         Ford        200
32.  Sam Hornish Jr      Dodge       200
33.  Bobby Labonte       Chevrolet   198
34.  Brad Keselowski     Dodge       197
35.  Paul Menard         Ford        197
36.  David Gilliland     Ford        195
37.  P.J. Jones          Toyota       64
38.  Landon Cassill      Chevrolet    54
39.  Robby Gordon        Toyota       34
40.  Kurt Busch          Dodge        30
41.  Max Papis           Toyota       27
42.  Michael McDowell    Toyota       20
43.  Joe Nemechek        Toyota       14

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