Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch Discuss Abandoning Nationwide Title Hopes

Two past Nationwide Series champions who are currently second and third in points in that series will abandon their title hopes after this weekend.

Though neither ever said they planned to run the full season, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch at least toyed with the idea of going for another championship. Both drivers have participated in every Nationwide race so far.

But with the Sprint Cup Series splitting from Nationwide for a couple weeks, both said they won’t try to go back and forth between two tracks.

Points leader Brad Keselowski, Carl Edwards and Paul Menard are still apparently planning to attempt a full schedule in both series.

Harvick said running the full schedule would simply take away too much focus from his program on the Sprint Cup side.

“I told you guys from the beginning that I never had any intentions of doing them all,” Harvick said. “You might as well leave that little ray of hope that everybody wanted so you guys could all keep talking about it.

“The only way to win (a Cup championship) is to be competitive and to race for it.”

Harvick will have Mike Bliss in the No. 33 car for the next couple weeks and use Ron Hornaday for at least two races this summer (Road America and Indianapolis).

One problem is the timing of going from Sonoma to Road America (in Wisconsin), which will cause drivers to miss Saturday Cup practice in Northern California.

“They’ve made it impossible to not take away from both programs with the Road America race, and if I can’t do them all, there is no reason to even worry about the whole summer stretch,” Harvick said.

As for Busch, the defending series champion said he’ll be “frustrated” to see someone else inside the car, but knew his priority needed to be with the Cup team.

“I’m going to miss running with those guys...but I feel it’s a good thing,” Busch said. “It’s for the best for the Cup program and making sure we keep our focus there and trying to win that championship.”

For more Nationwide Series news, be sure to check out Lee Montgomery’s NNSRacing.com site.