Harvick out of gas, out of luck at finish

Nick Christensen

Monday, March 8, 2004 | 10:04 a.m.

Kevin Harvick almost parlayed his Busch series win in Saturday's Sam's Town 300 into a Sunday win at the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400, but came up just short.

Five laps short.

Harvick led 43 of the 267 laps in Sunday's Nextel Cup race, including a run at the point from laps 203 to 229. He was running about 2.7 seconds behind leader and eventual winner Matt Kenseth with ten laps to go, but ran out of fuel at lap 262.

On the pit stop, his car wouldn't start, and too many of his crew jumped over the wall to give Harvick's Chevrolet a push-start. He was assessed a stop-and-go penalty on the next lap.

Harvick finished 21st, one lap behind the leaders.

"What can you say? We had a top five car and we finished 21st," he said afterward. "I can't believe we ran out of gas with that many laps to go. We need to throw out our computers that figure that stuff and start over."

Crew chief Todd Berrier said that despite the new rules, it all came down, yet again, to gas mileage.

"The fall off on the tires wasn't a terrible thing. It's still going to come to gas mileage again," Berrier said. "We knew we were going to be short, regardless. There isn't anything we could do about that. But we were coming in on that same lap. We were just a half-a-lap short. I don't know why all the rest of them could make it and we couldn't. So we've got to re-figure some things."

As uneventfully as Sunday finished for Harvick, Saturday closed out just as exciting.

Harvick held off a furious late charge by Kasey Kahne, driving onto the apron at the start-finish line to block Kahne from going low to win Saturday's Busch race.

But it was little consolation after the trying end to Sunday.

"We had a great run going with awesome pit stops, but all that is for nothing because we ran out of gas," Harvick said. "It's frustrating and we'll make sure it doesn't happen again."