{"id":196166,"date":"2025-10-08T00:12:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T00:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/196166\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T00:12:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T00:12:11","slug":"kevin-harvick-makes-nascar-championship-four-prediction-ahead-of-vegas-motorsport-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/196166\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Harvick makes NASCAR Championship Four prediction ahead of Vegas – Motorsport – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> Playoff field now down to the final eight ahead of a trip to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, 2014 champion Kevin Harvick<\/a> has singled out the four stars he believes will remain in the hunt for silverware come the season finale at Phoenix.<\/p>\n

The Round of 12 came to a close on Sunday with the Bank of America Roval 400<\/a>, in which Bubba Wallace<\/a>, Tyler Reddick<\/a>, Ross Chastain<\/a>, and Austin Cindric all saw their hopes of a championship run come to an end. It proved a particularly dramatic ending for Chastain in the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet, after he collided with Denny Hamlin<\/a>\u2019s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in the final corner, desperately looking to keep his Playoff hopes alive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for him, the clash spun both him and Hamlin, as Team Penske\u2019s Joey Logano<\/a> secured his Round of 8 berth, passing them both within sight of the finish line. As such, the final eight in the hunt are Hamlin, Logano, Ryan Blaney<\/a>, Christopher Bell<\/a>, Chase Briscoe, William Byron<\/a>, Kyle Larson<\/a>, and Chase Elliott<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Appearing on the \u2018Harvick\u2019s Happy Hour<\/a>\u2019 podcast, its namesake said he believed the final four would be Hamlin, Blaney, Larson, and Bell. As for his co-hosts, Kaitlyn Vincie had Logano in place of Hamlin, while Mamba Smith shortlisted Blaney, Briscoe, Byron, and Bell.<\/p>\n

Delving into more depth ahead of the Round of 8, Harvick added that when it comes to three-time champion Logano, he\u2019s not confident that the 35-year-old has the speed necessary this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cVegas and Martinsville and Talladega are good tracks for them, but I don’t think they have the speed of the 12 (Blaney),\u201d Harvick said, although he still believes the No. 22 team cannot be underestimated. \u201cThey have the ability to put themselves in front of them with executing on the restart. So, they’re dangerous from that standpoint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLike I say, I don’t think they have the speed that they need, but they have the ability to make calls and make things happen that are better than everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Harvick admitted to having been underwhelmed by both Byron and Briscoe in the Round of 12. On Hendrick Motorsports\u2019 Byron, Harvick said he reckons that \u201cTheir speed has been off,\u201d adding, \u201cWe went to St. Louis, we were like, \u2018Oh, maybe they\u2019ve found something.\u2019 But now it’s kind of flip-flopped.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DON’T MISS…<\/p>\n

\u201cNow the 5 (Larson) seems to be the one that has more speed than the 24. They had the big miss at Kansas. They ground one out and were able to put themselves in a position to get a decent finish, but they had no speed at Kansas. It was a big flop at Kansas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey might show up at Vegas. They might not. I don’t know because they were awful. They were awful at Kansas. So, I think Byron, I think that Briscoe was probably a little more off than what I thought they were going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for one potential surprise package, Harvick highlighted JGR\u2019s Bell, noting that the key for him and the No. 20 team is to avoid pit road errors. \u201cThe 20 car will have the speed, it’s going to come down to just the execution of the details, and the mistakes need to be small, they can’t be catastrophic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In fact, Harvick went on to pick Bell as his favorite to take the checkered flag at Las Vegas, reiterating that \u201cthose guys have the speed and even at the places where you think somebody else is going to win, if they can keep themselves from having a catastrophic situation, they will have the speed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff field now down to the final eight ahead of a trip to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,97340,10328,3932,5793,25423,1483,86140,634,8662,15224,82],"class_list":["post-196166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-championship-four-prediction","tag-christopher-bell","tag-denny-hamlin","tag-joey-logano","tag-kevin-harvick","tag-las-vegas","tag-las-vegas-motor-speedway","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-playoffs","tag-ryan-blaney","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}