Kevin Harvick wins Kobalt 400

LAS VEGAS — Kevin Harvick dominated the Kobalt 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, capturing his first win of the season and snapping a streak of runner-up finishes.

“It’s so cool to win here in Las Vegas, and (to) start this West Coast swing off this way is pretty awesome,” Harvick, a Bakersfield, Calif., native, said. “Just to be in front of all these fans I’ve raced in front of since about the mid-’90s, it’s pretty special to win here.”

It was his sixth consecutive top-two finish, dating back to the final three races of 2014.

“We just have to keep our heads down and keep doing everything that we’ve been doing,” Harvick said. “This isn’t a bunch of guys that are just going to go out and brag. We’re going to race very week like we have never won a race before. That’s the kind of determination that you need when you are going to do this stuff.”

Martin Truex Jr. finished second, and Ryan Newman was third. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top five.

Harvick lost leads to Truex and Earnhardt in laps immediately following restarts, but both times Harvick quickly retook his position up front.

“Harvick was so fast all day,” Truex said. “I got the lead on him once there on a restart and thought, ‘Oh, this is pretty cool.’ But we didn’t have anything to hold him off. We’ll keep working and we’ll get better, and hopefully this is a sign of things to come.”

Several other drivers also led laps by staying out later during green-flag pit cycles.

Earnhardt tried a two-tire strategy to get off pit road ahead of Harvick during green-flag stops inside the final 40 laps. However, on four new tires, Harvick quickly overtook Earnhardt on the track. Truex and Newman also got by Earnhardt in the closing laps. Like Earnhardt, Newman took only two new tires on his final stop.

“The guys did a really good job in the pits with the Caterpillar Chevrolet,” Newman said. “It was a good run. An improvement over last year at this race. Just proud of the team. We keep building on it. They are doing a great job. We are getting closer.”

Harvick started the race from the 18th spot and took four tires during a lap-25 competition caution while most of the front-runners took two. With the extra new tires, he continued his drive to the front, taking the lead from Jimmie Johnson on lap 91 and leading most of the remaining laps of the 267-lap race.

Joey Logano stayed out later during a cycle of green-flag stops and led laps before hitting pit road just in time to see a yellow flag on lap 139. He was able to remain in the top five before receiving a pit-road speeding penalty during a caution with about 100 laps to go. Logano was nabbed for speeding on pit road a second time during a caution with 80 laps to go.

Logano started on the pole and led 40 of the first 42 laps before losing the lead to Johnson.

After losing the top spot to Harvick, Johnson headed to pit road with a loose wheel and fell off the lead lap. His race went from bad to worse when a blown tire sent him into the wall with just under 100 laps to go.

A few laps later, Johnson hit the wall again because of another tire issue.

“The first one, they said the bead blew on it,” said Johnson, who finished in 41st place. “We don’t have any brake temp here, so I don’t know what could have caused that. That’s kind of a freak deal. The second one, it went soft, so there could have been some damage that caused it or some rub or something like that, and it went soft going into turn three, and I hit the wall.”

AJ Allmendinger finished sixth, Brad Keselowski was seventh, Kyle Larson eighth, Matt Kenseth ninth and Logano 10th.