UPDATE: Kevin Harvick has been disqualified from the race after failing post-race technical inspection.
Harvick, who announced prior to the start of the season that 2023 would be his final Cup season, was eliminated from title contention after the first round of the playoffs.
However, as Sunday’s race wound to a close, he and fellow Ford drivers Riley Herbst and Ryan Blaney found themselves up front of the field.
The three took turns pushing each other and with four of 188 laps to go, Harvick grabbed a sizeable lead. Blaney, however, was able to power back ahead of Harvick with two laps remaining.
Blaney held off Harvick by 0.012 seconds after a wild, side-by-side battle on the final lap which saw Herbst getting caught up in a wreck behind them but still claiming a 10th-place finish.
“I knew we were in a great spot there with Riley [Herbst] behind us and I don’t know where he spun out, but he got spun out and I knew that if he was still there by the time we got to the end of the tri-oval, we were going to be in really good shape,” Harvick said.
“I tried to put a donut on [Blaney’s] door and slow him down just a little bit, but just a great effort and we came up a little short.”
Sunday’s race was the final superspeedway race of Harvick’s career, which includes one previous win at Talladega (2010) and two victories at Daytona, including the 2007 Daytona 500.
While Sunday’s race featured 70 lead changes among 24 drivers, Harvick patiently waited his turn out front, not taking the lead for the first time until lap 161.
From there, he remained in the win for career win No. 61, right down to the last few feet.
“I thought I was in a really good spot headed down the back straightaway (on the last lap) with everything that was happening because I knew I could get off the tri-oval with Riley right on my bumper,” Harvick said.
“Then, he got spun in the middle of the trioval. Right about there I said, ‘Man, we’re sailing.’ The spotter is yelling at me to side draft. I’m like, ‘We aren’t going to need to side-draft, and then Riley got loose and spun out and I’m like, ‘We’re all alone here with two of them below me.’
“But it was a great day, a great way to end at Talladega. I always want to win, but it is what it is.”
Asked what he thought the atmosphere might have been, had his last Talladega race ended in Victory Lane, Harvick said, “Yeah, they might have torn it down. That would have been great.
“Talladega has been so up-and-down through the years. We’ve had some great moments and some bad moments. The last superspeedway race and we went out with everything rolling, so that’s a good thing.”