Remember last year when Joey Logano dumped Matt Kenseth at Kansas to win the race in the second round of the Chase?

Didn’t turn out so well for Logano. Despite winning all three races in the second round, Logano failed to advance to the final four at Homestead thanks in large part to Kenseth’s retribution a few weeks later at Martinsville. Kenseth body slammed the No. 22 Ford in turn one whilst Logano was leading. Logano never recovered.

I think we have seen a similar incident at Texas last week and retribution may be coming this week at Phoenix.

On a late restart, Kevin Harvick got into Austin Dillon and sent the No. 3 spinning. Harvick apologized, but Dillon and his team were apoplectic.

“He flat out wrecked you,” said Dillon’s crew chief Slugger Labbe. “Write down that number. We are going to Phoenix next week and he’s going to have to win.”

Labbe is right. As it stands right now, Harvick is 18 points behind fourth-place Kyle Busch for the final spot in the finale. Not insurmountable if some of the drivers in front of him have trouble, but he will most likely need a win to join Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards in advancing. He has been in this position before, but never with someone overtly head-hunting for the No. 4 Chevy.

Of course, Harvick has a history with the Dillon brothers. They are the grandsons of Richard Childress, for whom Harvick drove the first 12 years of his Cup career. Austin moved into Harvick’s ride (renumbered from 29 to 3) at Richard Childress Racing in 2014.

At a truck race at Martinsville in 2013, Harvick felt Ty Dillon (Austin’s younger brother) wrecked him.

“I don’t care what they throw at me,” Harvick said after the race. “That’s exactly the reason I’m leaving RCR because you’ve got those punk-ass kids coming up and they’ve got no respect for what they do in this sport and they’ve had everything fed to them with a spoon. So, I cut him slack all day and, you know, he just dive-bombs me in there, dumps me.”

Ty responded in kind.

“That stunk – the wreck part – but to tear up a truck after the race and totally take us out of the race and not to stick around after the race and walk off and not even want to say anything to me. I’m sure he’s tweeting something now about it. So, he can’t even face me after,” Dillon said. “I’m pretty disappointed in the things that just went down. I used to look up to that guy but I guess he doesn’t understand the circumstances of what’s going on.”

Austin reminded the world of Harvick’s words after his night ended at Texas.

“He didn’t like it, I guess, that the silver-spoon kid was outrunning him,” Austin said.

Good times.

I will say this: it didn’t look like Harvick wrecked Austin on purpose. It looked like the No. 3 got loose (maybe because Harvick was close to him) and wiggled. NBC’s Steve Latarte even said he thought Harvick was not pushing hard, but made contact when Austin got loose. I was not in the car, but I have watched the replay several times since Sunday and can’t really see it any other way.

But what really happened doesn’t matter. What matters is what Austin and Harvick perceive. Austin feels slighted and it could come back to haunt Harvick, just like it did Logano last year.

Andy Cagle writes a weekly column during the NASCAR season. He can be reached by email at andycagle78@gmail.com.

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