NASCAR mailbag: Why Kevin Harvick’s Bristol win mattered

Bristol Motor Speedway’s annual summer night race was a soggy affair, with rain causing a one-day delay. Nevertheless, it more than delivered. Kevin Harvick scored a victory that served as a reminder of what he’s capable of, while NASCAR may have discovered a solution to enhance its product across a spectrum of tracks.

Mailbag questions can be submitted by emailing jordanmbianchi@gmail.com.

I didn’t think the chemical compound Bristol used was perfect, but it did seem to work for the most part. Drivers could run top and bottom and actually pass, and Bristol felt like a bit of the Bristol of old. Is this something that could be incorporated elsewhere to make the racing better?

--Kent

The complexity of the race certainly felt different. No longer were drivers largely dependent on needing slower traffic to get around another car, as they had tangible options on how to best traverse around the mile-and-a-half oval. For some, that meant utilizing the lower groove -- where track workers applied a tacky resin to increase grip levels -- while others still preferred the top lane.

The result was as an entertaining event with plenty of passing throughout the field. Overall, Sunday’s race featured 20 lead changes, second-most at Bristol over the last four years. That’s a huge positive.

Could other tracks put resin on the surface to juice racing with similar effect to Bristol? Opinions vary. Jimmie Johnson said NASCAR should try it on intermediate ovals, which often have just a single preferable groove making passing limited, while Bristol winner Kevin Harvick disagreed, saying asphalt-type tracks wouldn’t see any improvement.

But even if resin can only work on concrete tracks as Harvick contends, administering such a substance would be a benefit at the other two concrete venues on the schedule, Dover International Speedway and Martinsville Speedway. Both are almost exclusively single grooves -- particularly Martinsville -- and extended side-by-side racing is scarce.

And although there are no guarantees resin could help asphalt tracks such as Chicagoland or Kansas, it couldn’t hurt to find out. Neither speedway has a history of compelling races, and any gains, even if they’re minuscule, would be welcomed.

Was Harvick’s win really that big of a deal, some kind of statement like you wrote? The way I see it, he took advantage of a bunch of good cars crashing and won. What kind of statement is that?

--D.J.

A fair point, but if you’re going to view Harvick’s victory as a byproduct of happenstance (Busch broke a suspension part and crashed; Kurt Busch and Brad Keselowski wrecked racing for the lead; Denny Hamlin sped on pit road; Joey Logano had a loose wheel late requiring a pit stop) then you need to take into account how many races Harvick’s lost due to similar circumstances.

There are myriad factors that go into winning, and chief among them is avoiding mistakes and capitalizing when your competitors experience misfortune. That’s exactly an area where Harvick and the No. 4 team have struggled in 2016, letting an avalanche of potential victories slip away — be it for blunders on pit road, gaffes on the track, or mere bad luck.

On Sunday, Harvick and company executed. They kept the mistakes to a minimum, and when things shifted to their advantage they made it work. It’s not a complicated formula. Let’s remember, as great as Kyle Busch has been this season, two of his victories (Texas, Kansas) came because a dominant Martin Truex Jr. messed up. And without those two wins, Busch would have the same number of wins as Harvick, who actually owns a better average finish (ninth) than Busch (13th).

Is it me or has or is silly season been kinda bland? I keep waiting/wanting something big to happen and it’s been pretty quiet so far.

--Travis

Don’t know if bland is the right descriptor. It’s more all the big, earth-shattering moves were either revealed some time ago or long presumed.

When Tony Stewart declared he would retire at the end of this season, he immediately named Clint Bowyer his successor. Then, Stewart-Haas Racing announced in February it would switch manufacturers from Chevrolet to Ford. And Erik Jones joining an expanding Furniture Row Racing had been oft-discussed since the team signed with Toyota last fall, which made the news earlier this month a forgone conclusion.

All things considered, those are three pretty sizable pieces to the silly season puzzle that are going to be hard to surpass in magnitude. Thus there is little left to sort out with where the drivers, sponsors, etc. will end up for 2017.

That doesn’t mean something unexpected couldn’t arise, though. It appears likely Ryan Newman won’t be returning to Richard Childress Racing next year, with the team instead opting to promote Ty Dillon, Childress’ grandson, from the Xfinity Series to Sprint Cup.

If Newman, an above-average driver who’s made the playoffs five of the past seven years (and in position to do so again this year), is available, could that entice Richard Petty Motorsports or a team of similar stature to juggle its driver lineup? It’s not an unfathomable notion.

Of course, such a sequence is predicated on an organization having the necessary funding in place to accommodate Newman’s arrival. That’s something a lot of teams simply don’t have.