Stewart-Haas Racing has tough day in Las Vegas

Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this story listed three sponsors for Danica Patrick's Cup team and an incorrect number of sponsored events. Patrick has four primary sponsors for more than 20 Cup races, including a one-race deal with Mobil 1. 

LAS VEGAS — A season that had started so impressively with a victory at Daytona and within eyesight of another checkered flag in Atlanta, imploded Sunday afternoon for Stewart-Haas Racing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Not long after the culmination of the Kobalt 400, a search for SHR crew chief Rodney Childers proved futile - not surprising considering teams pack up and leave if they are eliminated before the race ends. A senior member of a competitor’s crew team in a neighboring garage stall, pointed to an empty space among rows of haulers.

“They loaded it up and are gone," the member said. "(Childers) probably has two drinks in him by now at the team hotel. If I was him, that’s where I’d be.”

RELATED COVERAGE:

Martin Truex Jr. wins in Las Vegas as fight breaks out

Kyle Busch fights with Joey Logano's pit crew after NASCAR race in Las Vegas

Kevin Harvick rips NASCAR medical response team after Las Vegas crash

Kurt Busch opened the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season by winning the Daytona 500, and Kevin Harvick dominated last week in Atlanta before incurring a speed penalty on pit row with 11 laps remaining. The SHR team had switched from Chevrolet to Ford for this season, and the future appeared to be bright.

Sunday, however, might have driven an owner crazy, as Harvick and Danica Patrick did not finish, and battery trouble relegated Busch to 30th place. Clint Bowyer, who started 13th and finished 10th in his No. 14 Haas Automation Ford, easily had the best day of Stewart-Haas’s quartet.

“It was a struggle,” Bowyer said. “To be truthful, we weren’t the best all weekend. But we just kept digging. It’s our third race together and we got a top-10 (finish), so we’ve got to keep digging.”

On Lap 68, Harvick blew a tire and slammed into the wall just after passing the start-finish line; as the track bent left, he appeared to stay on a beeline straight into the curve of the wall.

He said he began feeling a vibration four or five laps earlier, that he was trying to make it to the end of the first stage, at Lap 80. “Obviously, I didn’t make it,” Harvick said. He bristled about the medical crew taking so long to reach him. He kept sitting as smoke appeared to engulf the cabin.

With 21 laps to the finish, Patrick’s engine blew and smoke flowed out of the rear of her No. 10 Aspen Dental Ford for a few hundred feet. Worse, Kurt Busch ran immediately in her wake; nothing happened, but it would have added to the SHR miseries had he caught oil or other debris, or was blinded into causing a wreck of his own.

That continued a disappointing year for Patrick, which started with the January announcement that Nature’s Bakery had terminated its sponsorship deal with her, which Stewart-Haas countered with a $31 million breach-of-contract lawsuit. Aspen is one of four companies that are sponsoring her for more than 20 races this season. Mobil 1 announced last week it will be her primary sponsor at Bristol Motor Speedway on April 23.

Her Daytona 500 ended in a 17-car crash with a quarter of the race left. In Atlanta last week, she started 24th and at least finished, in 17th.

“We just got the car to a place where I thought we could have gotten a little more racy with it, especially if we would have caught some breaks,” she said. “But then it just flattened out. I just rode around the top in case I blew up. Having a teammate behind me was not ideal for the timing of it. Unfortunately, it happened. We’ll just move on.”

Busch, a native Las Vegan who has been showing off the impressive Daytona trophy around town, started in 17th. Needing to have a battery replaced, in a rectangular box at the front of the left-rear wheel well, with the tire removed, is not a common sight in a NASCAR pit.

“We went through a lot today,” Busch said. “Obviously, it wasn’t the day we were hoping to have. We didn’t have the long-run speed or the balance, and we had an electrical issue … we kept battling. We didn’t give up. I hoped to have a better run here in front of the hometown fans.”

Rodney Childers most likely shared that hope. Instead, he’ll have another.

PHOTOS: 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule