CONCORD, N.C. - Pole-sitter Kevin Harvick led 12 laps early at Charlotte Motor Speedway but his day was over before the halfway point in the Bank of America 500.
Harvick thought he had lost power in his No. 4 Busch Beer Chevrolet when the car began to fall off the pace on Lap 157. But when the 2014 Sprint Cup Series champion cycled through all his switches, nothing seemed to help.
His Stewart-Haas Racing team was then unable to diagnose the problem on pit road, and Harvick reported smelling oil each time he attempted to re-fire the car.
“It just suddenly shut off and the things that it points to are no oil pressure,” Harvick said in the garage. “It’s definitely not a power issue with the battery or anything like that. They are trying to diagnosis it. I hate it for everybody on our Busch team they made some great adjustments today and got our car back where we needed to be to run up front and everything was going fine. Lots of things can go wrong, and today they did.”
Charlotte marks the first race in the Round of 12 for the Chase. Harvick has never been eliminated in the current format of the Chase, making it to the final four at Homestead-Miami Speedway the last two years.
However, he will leave Charlotte in a points deficit with Kansas Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway the next two races in the second round.