Summary Montoya is off to a horrific start to the season with 6 finishes of 20th or worse in 1st 8 races.
RICHMOND (AP) - Kevin Harvick plowed through traffic to charge from seventh to first in a two-lap overtime sprint to take out Saturday s NASCAR race at Richmond International Raceway.
It was Harvick s first Sprint Cup win of the season he opened the year with a win in the exhibition Sprint Unlimited at Daytona and his 20th career victory. It put Chevrolet and Richard Childress Racing in Victory Lane, snapping a two-race winning streak by Joe Gibbs Racing.
"Just shifted gears, hit the pedal and hoped for the best," Harvick said. "They all went high and I went low. The seas kind of parted there. They didn t get a very good restart, and my car launched.
"I was able to take it three-wide, those guys all drove it in hard, and I was able to get by the next two. I only had one to go by the time I got to the backstretch."
Juan Pablo Montoya was trying to hold off Harvick for his first win since 2010 when the caution came out with four laps remaining.
"I was like, Really? Really? " Montoya said about the caution. He pounded his fist on the steering wheel when the yellow flag waved.
Montoya left the decision to pit or stay out to crew chief Chris Heroy, who gamely tried to calm the driver and convince him he could still win the race. He brought Montoya down pit road, a decision most of the field followed as everyone traded track position for tires.
Both Montoya and Harvick took four tires, which put them sixth and seventh for the final restart. Harvick teammate Jeff Burton was the leader after Burton, Jamie McMurray and A.J. Allmendinger stayed on the track.
When the race resumed, the first three cars on old tires couldn t hold off traffic and it created mayhem through the field. Harvick rocketed his way through the pack, dragging Clint Bowyer and Joey Logano with him.
Bowyer wound up second, Logano third and Montoya had to settle for fourth.
Montoya, who is off to a horrific start to the season with six finishes of 20th or worse in the first eight races, was comforted with his first top-10 of the season.
"That is what we needed," the ex-Formula One driver said. "I felt like last week we had a top-five car as well, but not quite a car to win. This weekend, we came here and tested, and the guys did an amazing job, and we had a good car all weekend."
Tony Stewart restarted in fifth, but was bumped out of the way by Kurt Busch and faded to 18th. Stewart angrily traded bumps with Busch on the cooldown lap, even trying to force him into the wall, before the two drivers headed to the garage.
Once back at their haulers Stewart and Busch shouted at each other over crew members, with Busch claiming the final two laps "were a free-for-all."
"We were hoping to be on the right sequence at the end," Busch said. "Some guys had older tires. Some guys had newer tires. We were in the mixed. A green-white-checkered at the end, it is just chaos. Cars are everywhere. People are beating and banging and shoving each other out of the way. It s pretty wild."
