Monday, Aug. 4, 2003 | 8:59 a.m.
INDIANAPOLIS -- From the time he started racing go-karts at the age of 6, Kevin Harvick dreamed of winning a race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
He just didn't envision that victory coming in a stock car.
Harvick joined his boyhood idol, open-wheel legend Rick Mears, as the only drivers from Bakersfield, Calif., to win a race at the Speedway when he captured Sunday's NASCAR Winston Cup Brickyard 400.
Harvick still has an autographed picture of Mears, the four-time Indy 500 winner, posing at IMS and signed, "Good luck, hope to see you here someday."
That day came Sunday and Harvick clearly was taken aback by the situation.
"Man, I didn't know I'd be sitting in Victory Lane and be getting to do all this here at the Brickyard," Harvick said after a lengthy post-race celebration that included a burnout across the yard of bricks at the start/finish line.
"It means a lot to me. I've looked at that picture for a long time When I finally got the opportunity to race here a few years ago, it was pretty much a dream come true for me."
To actually win a race here was almost more than Harvick, 27, could fathom.
"I really can't put it all into words," he said. "I really don't know how I feel yet. I know I feel good, but it's hard to explain how good I feel.
"I mean, how did I get here? I wish somebody could tell me."
Perhaps the strange turn of events late in the race didn't leave Harvick with much time to digest what was about to happen. Tony Stewart dominated much of the race, leading three times for 60 laps, and looked as if he would notch his first victory at Indy until a late pit stop took him out of contention.
"I thought we were going to (finish) third there for a while," Harvick said after trying to run down Stewart and Jamie McMurray. "Then (Stewart) pitted -- I don't know why."
Harvick was lined up in second place, behind McMurray, on a restart with 16 laps remaining when McMurray took the high line and allowed Harvick to slip down the track and take the lead. A caution period on the following lap set up a 10-lap dash to the finish but Harvick pulled away to a 2.758-second victory.
"He chose to go around on the outside," Harvick said of McMurray. "I figured if I was on the bottom, I had at least more control over my own destiny than I would if I just followed him.
"I cleared (a lapped car), just dove down there and it was like the sea just parted."
Series points leader Matt Kenseth also got past McMurray and finished second. McMurray, a rookie, was third, Jeff Gordon fourth and defending race winner Bill Elliott fifth.
Robby Gordon, Harvick's teammate at Richard Childress Racing, came in sixth and Las Vegas native Kurt Busch was seventh. Jimmy Spencer, Mark Martin and Rusty Wallace rounded out the top 10.
"I'm a little disappointed that we finished third because I felt we had the dominant car or at least one of the best cars all day long," said McMurray, who led twice for 22 laps.
"I just couldn't put it together there at the end. The restart, I was out of control; I couldn't go. I couldn't do anything, I was just stuck behind them."
Kenseth padded his lead to 286 points over Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finished 14th, but said Sunday's race wasn't about points.
"We're out here to try to win races and we did everything we could to try to win the race," Kenseth said. "At the end, we came up a little bit short.
"If it would have gone green, I think (crew chief Robbie Reiser) definitely had the strategy to win and I think we would have been in good shape there."
Instead, Harvick took advantage of the late-race restart and earned his fourth career Winston Cup victory after taking over the Richard Childress Racing GM Chevrolet following the death of Dale Earnhardt in the 2001 Daytona 500.
Childress said Sunday's victory reinforced his belief that Harvick is the driver to return the team to the level it had reached before Earnhardt's death.
"It was tough for what Kevin was put into in 2001, to go through that," Childress said. "Our goal someday is to be on the stage at New York (as a championship team). Kevin has all the talent, all the ability.
"He handled himself under the pressure in 2001 (and) he can handle (the pressure of) a championship. I'm just excited about the years ahead of us."
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