Harvick wins truck race at Michigan
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Kevin Harvick bounced back from an ill- race pit road blunder before he held off Timothy white-checkered finish to win Saturday's VFW 200 Camping World Truck Series race at Michigan International Speedway.
Harvick dealt with a loose truck and then had a lengthy stop on pit road shortly before the halfway point. Just after he passed Mark Martin for the lead on a restart on lap 90, Martin and Parker Kligerman made contact and then spun around, triggering a five-truck wreck on the backstretch.
An incident involving rookie Joey Coulter in the closing laps setup the two- lap overtime finish.
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After the final restart, Peters moved ahead of Miguel Paludo to take second. Peters then challenged Harvick for the lead before Nelson Piquet Jr. got loose and slammed into the inside wall along the backstretch to end the race under caution.
"It was ugly," Harvick said. "We had a little bit of trouble on pit road, and we were way too loose at the start of the race. The [team] did a great job. It was a lot of fun to win here at Michigan. I didn't think we had the truck to do it."
Harvick claimed his 11th win in his 111th truck start. He won two weeks ago at Pocono. Harvick also became the first driver to win a Sprint Cup, Nationwide and truck race at Michigan. His Sprint Cup victory at this track came one year ago.
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Paludo finished third, followed by James Buescher and David Starr.
Jason White, Ron Hornaday Jr., Brendan Gaughan, Colin Braun and Cole Whitt completed the top-10.
Matt Crafton started on the pole and led the first 20 laps, but was one of the five drivers involved in the late-race multi-truck accident. Kligerman, who slammed into the back of Austin Dillon after his contact with Martin, took blame for the incident.
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Martin led the most laps with 33 but wound up finishing 14th.
Kyle Busch's day at Michigan came to an end early when he suffered a damaged radiator due to debris from another truck with 37 laps remaining. Busch, who finished 25th, failed to finish a truck race for the first time since May 2010 at Dover, when he suffered a fuel pump issue.
Despite his 13th-place run, Johnny Sauter reclaimed the points lead. Sauter holds a five-point advantage over Buescher. Dillon entered the race as the points leader but fell eight markers behind after his 22nd-place finish.
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Buescher failed to qualify for the February race at Phoenix but has steadily climbed up the point standings since then.