No penalties for Kevin Harvick after Talladega wreck

NASCAR won't penalize Kevin Harvick for intentionally bringing out the caution and manipulating the results of the race Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.

With a sour motor and the potential of losing enough spots to be eliminated from the Chase for the Sprint Cup, Harvick clipped Trevor Bayne on the final restart of the CampingWorld.com 500. The chain-reaction wreck that followed resulted in the caution coming out, freezing the field with just two laps remaining and allowing drivers to maintain their position to the checkered flag as long as they kept a reasonable pace under caution.

Harvick finished seventh in the standings to be among the eight drivers to advance to the Eliminator Round. He was six points ahead of Ryan Newman, who finished ninth in the standings and was the first driver eliminated. If there were no accidents in the final two laps, Harvick likely would have finished 10-15 spots worse than he did and would not have advanced.

"NASCAR has worked to review an extensive amount of material from Sunday's NASCAR race in Talladega including video, team radio transmissions and downloadable data," NASCAR said in a statement. "Based on that review, the race results are considered official."

The defending Cup champion said after the race that he tried to avoid causing a crash and never saw Bayne. His car had its most trouble on restarts and he was slow on the aborted first attempt at a green-white-checkered finish a few laps earlier. His crew chief Rodney Childers had told him on the in-car radio before the final restart that their best hope was for there to be a crash and told him to block as much as he could.

Speaking during media day for those remaining in the Chase, Harvick reiterated what he said Sunday as far as what happened and that he didn't realize Bayne was beside him. He said if the race was earlier in the season, he might have pulled out of line and come down pit road to make sure not to impact the race. But in a Chase elimination race, he had to see if he could get his car going on that final restart.

"You can't quit," Harvick said. "You can't just roll over and be done with it and say, 'Well, we tried our best.' ... It's like a football player, if his knee is blown out and he's playing in the Super Bowl, he is going to try to play as long as he can."

Harvick asked for the team to request that Bayne push him. With Harvick getting a slow start, Bayne nearly had Harvick passed on the outside before Harvick tried to move to the groove closest to the wall and clipped Bayne in the left rear.

"I was hoping that [my car] would kind of get going a little bit better and those guys would push me so I could kind of halfway get going and it didn't go," Harvick told ESPN.com after the race. "As I pulled up [the track], I didn't even see the 6 [of Bayne] up there and clipped him and shot him across the inside. It sucks, but it worked out."

Bayne said afterward that it was intentional, and two drivers eliminated -- Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin -- also doubted Harvick's intent.

"[Harvick] could only run about 30 miles per hour, so I think he saw people coming and he knew he was going to be [about] 30th, last car on the lead lap, so he caused the wreck," Hamlin said.

NASCAR also announced that there would be no penalties against Harvick and his Stewart-Haas Racing teammates for having to replace the assembly of the radiator inlet duct panels in their cars prior to qualifying Saturday. NASCAR said they didn't conform to the prescribed dimensions and forced the team to make the change before qualifying.

Harvick, nursing a bad cold, did not talk to anyone at NASCAR since the race ended Sunday.

"I just control the things that I can control," Harvick said. "I've been at this for a long time. There's going to be good situations, bad and in the middle - you navigate through them with whatever you think is your best routine.

"I've been to the doctor. I've been to the carpool line. I've been to lunch with my wife. I've done all the normal things that I do in a normal week."