Kevin Harvick Wins Auto Club 400 in California

Kevin Harvick won the Auto Club 400 to notch his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory of the young season. It might have taken him until the final turn to make it happen, but Harvick was able to pass Jimmie Johnson at the very end to take home his first win in 2011.

Harvick had trailed all day, failing to lead even one lap until he took the lead with less than a mile left in the race. While Harvick is celebrating his win, Johnson certainly has to be frustrated that he failed to close the deal on one of his best tracks on the circuit. Johnson has won on the Fontana, Calif., course five times in his career, and it looked like he was about to make it number six until Harvick shot around him on the outside.

To be honest, neither Harvick nor Johnson had the best car on Sunday, even though they finished first and second in the race. It was Kyle Busch who looked like he was in complete control of this race early on, and he actually led 151 laps of the Auto Club 400. He was still holding that lead with just nine laps left in the race, and it almost seemed like a certainty that he was going to be the one taking the checkered flag first.

This was exactly what Harvick and his team needed after a really rough start to the season. They finished 42nd in the 2011 Daytona 500, taking home only three points to sit near the bottom in the early NASCAR Sprint Cup standings. He followed that up with a fourth place finish in the Subway Fresh Fit 500 to get back into the thick of it. On Sunday, Harvick took in 47 points for the win, shooting up the NASCAR standings at the end of the day.

Carl Edwards is first in the overall standings after the first five races of the season, sitting at the top with 187 points and earnings of just over $1.8 million already this season. He is followed by Ryan Newman (178), Kurt Busch (177), and Kyle Busch (176). The standings are about as close as we have seen in recent years, but we will have to take a wait-and-see approach to see if this is deceptive. With so few points awarded each race, it makes each week more important than it was last year.

Defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson is all the way up to fifth in the standings with 173 points, and the top drivers have to be pretty worried that he is about to re-take that perch that has had his name on it for five years.

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