NASCAR: Harvick finally catches a break, Bubba's got the blues, and so long to Soapy!

And just like that, Kevin Harvick goes from Mr. Outsider to a seat at the table, and given the unpredictability of this 2022 season, he might yet have a shot at winning his second Cup Series championship by the time we get to Phoenix.

Having tried everything else this season, Harvick and his No. 4 Stewart-Haas team turned to Lady Luck at Michigan, and she finally said, “What the hell, go get ’em.”

A timely caution, conveniently coming after Harvick had pitted under green, led to him inheriting the lead and then keeping it as he claimed his 59th career win and presumably clinched a spot in the playoffs as the 15th different winner this year.

“Everybody who doubted us doesn’t know us,” Harvick said afterward.

Calm down, Kevin, it wasn’t personal. It was math. Things weren’t looking good for your playoff hopes, but now they are. So let’s climb through the gears and digest Michigan before storming off to Richmond.

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First Gear: Bell wrecks Chastain at a good time for Harvick

When all else fails, sometimes you just have to keep digging and await the big break. For Harvick, it came shortly after a green-flag pit stop with 42 laps remaining.

He’d hardly waved goodbye to his jackman when Christopher Bell, for whatever reason, drifted up into the path of the faster Ross Chastain, triggering a wreck and what turned out to be the final caution of the afternoon.

Harvick got to stay out on the track and inherit the lead as all the other lead-lap cars darted into the pits under caution. He has a reputation for closing out victories, you know, and he built on it by holding onto that lead tighter than bark on a pine.

“. . .There at the end we pitted, didn’t go a lap down, and the caution came out — got control of the race,” Harvick explained.

The great timing gave Harvick’s No. 4 Ford what it craved most Sunday: Wide open spaces.

“That’s the thing I struggled with the most today, was traffic and the restarts and just having to make up ground,” Harvick said. “Once I got clear track, that baby was huntin’.”

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Second Gear: Bubba Wallace goes negative (on himself)

Somewhere along the way, some all-too-clever racer referred to second place as “the first loser.” Sounds a bit harsh, don’t you think?

Second place, out of 37 starters, sounds rather decent, logical folks would agree. Yet Bubba Wallace was taking that “first loser” deal to heart. He was on the outside of the first row, alongside Harvick, on the final restart but ended up battling hard for second while Harvick ran off and hid.

“There were a lot of positives from this weekend, but I’m a person that looks more at the negatives and I need to change that,” Bubba said. “I want to win so bad, and this was the best opportunity.”

Bubba’s other runner-up finish came at the season-opening Daytona 500. Over the past month, he’s had three top-5s and finished no worse than eighth. If you’re placing bets on who might become the 16th different winner during the regular season — which has just three races remaining, by the way — Bubba might be your guy.

Third Gear: Denny Hamlin finds another way to lose

Denny Hamlin’s 2022 season just won’t quit throwing haymakers at the No. 11 team.

Along with three victories — two of which survived appellate court — the Gibbs Racing team has had more penalties than the 1970s Oakland Raiders’ defensive backfield (ask your daddy).

By the late stages of Sunday’s race, it was looking like Hamlin’s Toyota was the car to beat. And then, yet again, they beat themselves.

Adding to a long list of 2022 infractions, this time it was a wayward wheel (Strike 1) that led to an additional man going over the wall to retrieve it (Strike 2), and therefore a penalty that booted Hamlin from second on the restart to 23rd (Strike 3). He rallied to finish third.

What are you gonna do? No, seriously, it’s not just a figure of speech . . . what are you gonna do? Denny?

“I’m not really sure how you fix it,” he said. “I’m not smart enough to run the department to fix it. I just hope that we make strides and keep getting better. We’re the ones that have to look each other in the face on Monday and figure out how we just keep doing this.”

What a fun way to start the work week!

Fourth Gear: So long, Soapy

And now we’re off to Richmond, where Soapy Castles was a Top-10 regular during his career.

Who?

Castles. Neil Castles. Everyone called him Soapy.

Soapy died last week at age 87, and he’s worthy of reflection — can you think of another racer who drove for both Buck Baker and Elvis Presley?

Castles made nearly 500 NASCAR starts between 1957-76, mostly in his own cars but for a while in a Buck Baker ride. He supplemented his racing income as a Hollywood stunt driver — he did Elvis’ dirty work in the 1968 film, “Speedway.”

Here’s the most remarkable thing about Soapy, if you ask me: In 498 Cup Series starts, he not only had 178 top-10 finishes, but 51 top-5s, yet never won. He had 26 combined top-5s in 1969-70 alone.

You don’t need an actuary to tell you, if you sniff around the top five that often, somewhere along the way a trophy should fall in your lap. Kevin Harvick is no actuary but, after Michigan, he’d agree.

In a 1969 interview with the old Charlotte News, Soapy rationalized in a sensible way.

“So long as I can feed my wife and kids,” he said, “I’m staying in the sport.”

So long, Soapy.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR: After Kevin Harvick's good break, that baby was huntin'!