AUTO RACING roundup

NASCAR

Kevin Harvick wins seventh Sprint Cup pole of season

DOVER, DEL.

Time for some cuts, Chase style.

NASCAR’s revamped Chase for the Sprint Cup championship format is set for its first elimination race, when four of 16 drivers will be out of the title picture by Sunday night.

Win and advance — and they’ll all have to zip by Kevin Harvick to have a chance at Victory Lane.

Harvick turned a lap at 162.933 mph to win the pole Friday at Dover International Speedway, leading the field for the third Chase race. Led by Harvick, Chase drivers took the top four spots and six of 10.

Harvick’s seventh pole of the season gives him one more than he had combined in his career entering this season. And it makes him one of the drivers to beat in a race where championship hopes are on the line.

The bottom four are dumped from the hunt: Denny Hamlin, Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch and Aric Almirola are at risk of getting cut Sunday.

Hamlin, though, bolstered his bid to stay alive with a third-place qualifying run.

“It’s the most important race of my career because it’s the most significant of my career,” Hamlin said. “We’ve got to get past this weekend with a shot to win the title. If not, you become somewhat irrelevant.”

Team Penske drivers Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano are locked into the next round with wins in the first two Chase races.

Kyle Busch starts second and Keselowski is fourth. Jeff Gordon is sixth and Hendrick Motorsports teammate and nine-time Dover winner Jimmie Johnson is eighth. The rest of the Chase field has Kasey Kahne 12th, Matt Kenseth 14th, Logano 16th, Carl Edwards 18th, Ryan Newman 20th, Almirola 21st, Kurt Busch 22nd, Dale Earnhardt Jr. 25th, Biffle 27th, and AJ Allmendinger 28th.

Only six points separate Hamlin and Kurt Busch from Newman in the 12th and final spot.

“I believe if I run top five, I’ll put myself in,” Hamlin said. “A lot of things can happen. A lot of people that had bad luck last week are going to have a rebound week. We just hope to be on the better side of all those guys when it unfolds.”

Kurt Busch is eight points outside the 12th-place cutoff and Almirola is 10. The top seven drivers in the field would need a ton of bad luck to fall out of a Chase spot, while Kenseth, Edwards, Allmendinger, Kahne and Newman are all on the bubble.

“I do understand the consequences of this race are higher than any of the other ones we’ve run this year, but that’s kind of fun,” Edwards said.

Jamie McMurray was the highest non-Chase qualifier in fifth. Tony Stewart starts 15th in his first race since a grand jury decided he would not be charged in Kevin Ward Jr.’s death.

Harvick, who drives for Stewart-Haas Racing, is winless in 27 starts at Dover.

SPRINT CARS

Series in which Ward raced does not test for drugs

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

The sprint car series in which Kevin Ward Jr. raced the night he was fatally struck by a car driven by Tony Stewart does not drug test its drivers.

Chuck Miller, race director and president for the Empire Super Sprints circuit, told The Associated Press on Friday the series rule book prohibits drug or alcohol use at the track. Miller also said drivers are prohibited from competing while under the influence.

But, he added there are “currently no testing requirements in the rules.” That rule can be changed only by a membership vote at the annual meeting, which will be held in January.

Ontario County District Attorney Michael Tantillo said this week Ward was under the influence of marijuana the night of Aug. 9 at Canandaigua Motorsports Park in upstate New York.

“The levels determined were enough to impair judgment,” Tantillo said in announcing a grand jury decided Stewart would not be charged in Ward’s death.

ESS said no officials or drivers reported any indication that Ward was impaired behind the wheel at Canandaigua Speedway the night of the crash or any other race this season.

Stewart, the three-time NASCAR champion, told The Associated Press in his first interview that Ward’s death was “100 percent an accident.”

“I know 100 percent in my heart and in my mind that I did not do anything wrong,” he said Thursday from his home in Huntersville, North Carolina.

The Ward family, in a statement issued after the grand jury ruling, said “the matter is not at rest,” and Stewart may still face a civil lawsuit.

“The focus should be on the actions of Mr. Stewart,” the family statement said.

Wire reports