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Kevin Harvick fended off Jeff Gordon to win Saturday night at Charlotte.
Avoiding the misfortune that had plagued him for much of the season, Kevin Harvick survived a late-race restart to win the Bank of America 500 Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Harvick dominated for much of the night, but a late caution for Brian Vickers' crash with seven laps remaining bunched the field and set up a green-white-checkered finish. On the subsequent restart Harvick got the jump on second-place Jeff Gordon to drive away for his third win of 2014.
No driver has led more laps this year than Harvick. Despite his dominance, however, Harvick only had two early season wins with several strong runs derailed by mistakes on pit road or bad luck.
"Everybody on our team has just continued to build better race cars and we know that we've had the cars to run up front and lead laps and do the things that we need to do," Harvick said. "Things just haven't gone right and we've made some mistakes; things haven't gone right ore than not.
"This was the night that we needed to win."
Gordon finished second, followed by Jamie McMurray, Joey Logano and Kyle Busch.
With the victory Harvick is guaranteed to advance to Round 3 of the Chase for the Sprint Cup. The bottom four drivers will be eliminated following the race next week at Talladega Superspeedway.
Needing a good run to continue in the Chase, Dale Earnhardt Jr. encountered several issues, including a broken shifter, to finish 20th. Also facing elimination is Brad Keselowski and defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson. Keselowski and Johnson placed 16th and 17th Saturday, respectively.
All three drivers will need a win at Talladega to avoid elimination.
"We have won there a lot of time," Earnhardt said of Talladega. "I know what we need to do. We will just have to build a fast car and hope that we don't have any gremlins and try to go out there and win it. We had a lot of gremlins tonight."
Keselowski was involved in a fight with Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin in the garage following the race. Teammates Hamlin and Kenseth were upset with what they perceived as unsafe driving by Keselowski, who hit both cars after the checkered flag.
As Keselowski was walking back to his hauler, Kenseth charged him to trigger the fracas. I took several minutes before officials were able to separate Keselowski and Kenseth.
"To wreck somebody on the race track and come down pit road with other cars and people standing around and my seatbelts off and drive in the side of me is inexcusable," Kenseth said. "There's no excuse for that."
