At one point in the night Kevin Harvick had a nearly four second lead over Kyle Busch in second and thirteen seconds over Dale Earnhardt Jr. in third. For most of the race there were only five to six cars on the lead lap with everyone chasing the No. 33 Jimmy Johns Chevrolet. Leading 131 of the 195 laps, Harvick clearly had the most dominant car of the race, propelling him to his second Nationwide Series victory of the year and only his second win in his own Kevin Harvick Inc. equipment.

While Harvick had them covered all night, the final segment of the race once again came down to fuel mileage. When the caution flew for the third time on Lap 125, the five lead lap cars hit pit road. Sixty-nine laps from the finish, nearly every team was expected to hit pit road for fuel before the checkered flag. With Harvick the dominant car, Dale Earnhardt Jr. looked to steal one for the fans.

After backing off to save fuel, Busch dropped off the banking and onto pit road from the second spot on lap 181 for four tires and air pressure adjustment and the all important fuel. One lap later Harvick brought the No. 33 in for service and he nearly lost it. When it mattered most, Harvick’s guys struggled mightily on the final stop. The rear tire changer had a slow stop on the right side after a side skirt hung up the tire and when the crew made its way to the left side the car dropped off the jack. Harvick took off after the 17.5 second stop, yet was able to maintain his advantage over Busch.

With the two dominant cars racing each other, Earnhardt Jr. looked to stretch the fuel mileage in a gamble to score the win. Soft pedaling his way around the 1.5-mile speedway, Junior had the fans on their feet and a hard charging Harvick and Busch closing in his mirror.As the laps clicked away Harvick closed the gap on Earnhardt Jr. and with just two laps to go Harvick made the move under the No. 5 Degree V12 Chevrolet off Turn 2 to take the lead. Busch was able to follow his way past, but ran out of time as Harvick scored the victory.

“Kyle was a little bit better on the short runs there, but after about eight or ten laps this thing was just flat out awesome. Same way our truck was, same stuff underneath it. Just cut it a little bit closer than I would have liked to there at the end,” Harvick said from Victory Lane. “Nice to race the 18 head to head like that and have fun with him. I really thought that everybody had to pit. Just a great night for the fans to come out and watch a race. Dale Jr. on strategy, Kyle good on the shorter runs, us good after about ten laps, just a lot of that great Atlanta racing tonight.”

“Man, tonight the NOS Energy Drink Camry was good – I mean, it was really good. But Harvick was gone,” Busch said with a smile after climbing from his car. “It was just – what a non-race that was. Hopefully, it was a show there at the end. We were running down Jr. trying to get past him and he gave us both room. I could run the 33 down or beat the 33 for 15 to 18 laps – after that I just didn’t have anything for him. Those guys were so good on the long run. He just had it over us. We tried to short pit him. That only worked until they saw us come down pit road and then they came in the next lap. It didn’t quite work out great. I don’t think we really missed anything. We were ahead of third by a mile. Man, the 33 was just great – flawless.”

“We had a pretty good chance of making it and that was our only real shot at getting a win, it didn’t work out in our favor, but that was the best call to make for us,” Earnhardt Jr. explained. “The race ended how it should have with the fastest cars winning and with the best cars and drivers winning and us finishing third where we were running all night. I’m pretty happy. Would have liked to stole a win, but sometimes – we couldn’t have taken a lot of pride in that because we didn’t have them covered like Harvick and Kyle did.”

There has not been a more dominant performance like Harvick’s in quite some time. Leading nearly 67% of the laps, nearly putting the entire field behind him and winning despite struggles on pit road showed the hard work at KHI is finally paying off. While the team has not really struggled this year, Harvick admitted he felt behind the dominance of Joe Gibbs Racing. Mixing things up at the shop and refusing to let himself get beat, Harvick has done what was needed to be done to put himself back in Victory Lane.

“These guys have been working hard,” Harvick said of his team. “This car we actually raced at Chicago, cut the body off, put a new body on it. It’s been to the wind tunnel like three days ago it was in the wind tunnel. These guys have never quit. We reorganized our fab-shop to make things better. I think we have 20-22 people in our fab-shop now where we went from about ten just trying to make our cars better. Tonight the motor was quite a bit better than what it had been. So, everything was just kind of a next step to do what we had to do to be competitive with those guys. You can’t just sit on your hands when they’re beating you to a pulp every week. I felt like we were able to run with them a couple times now and hadn’t closed the deal and tonight we were able to close the deal. It’s just been a lot of work from top to bottom from everyone involved.”

With his runner-up finish, Busch was able to extend his lead in the series standings to 221 marks over Carl Edwards. Saturday night’s Degree V12 300 was slowed by cautions just three times for fourteen laps and saw thirteen lead changes amongst five drivers. The series heads to the Richmond International Raceway next weekend for the Virginia 529 College Savings 250.

                 DEGREE V12 300 RESULTS

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