We all knew Kevin Harvick’s early success could not continue forever and California proved to be the stopping point.  Starting 10th, Harvick’s run did not last long as a lap-39 incident with Kyle Larson put him six laps down and eventually finishing 35th. 

“I went down to side draft and he was coming up and we touched, and it just knocked the thing to the right and spun out,” Harvick said after the race. “Don’t know that it’s his fault.  I think that’s my fault for coming down the racetrack right there and trying to side draft and then, as we touched, it just came back up the racetrack.  I was just trying to get a little too much right there.”

Defending champion Martin Truex Jr. showed the rest of the field that 2017 was not a fluke.  Starting on the pole, Truex won both stages and cruised to a 12-second victory.  Leading 125 laps, Truex put a lock on his first victory of 2018 in Sunday’s Auto Club 400. He earned his 16th career win and first since last November at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the one that crowned him champion of the Cup Series.

“I knew we had a good racecar, honestly after the first adjustment of the race,” Truex said. “From there, it was just managing my tires and being smart.”

Not many lead changes were made during green flag racing, but there were 16 lead changes among seven drivers, most of them occurring during pit stop strategies. During the final green-flag pit stop, Kyle Busch beat Truex off pit road, but a crew member for the No. 18 team made a wrong adjustment. It was only a matter of time before Truex made the pass for the lead, one of multiple times he recovered from poor stops.

“We had a little trouble getting beat out of the pits and that was tough,” Truex added. “We fell back to fifth [at one point], and we had to work our way back up front, and I really had to take care of my front tires. And once we had some clean air, it was unbelievable.”

Truex’s dominance put him on top of the leaderboard, nine points ahead of the third-place finisher, Kyle Busch. Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Harvick, Clint Bowyer and Aric Almirola make up the top 10 in the point standings.

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series moves to Martinsville Sunday, the shortest track on the schedule.