Kevin Harvick offered his thoughts on one of the more significant issues arising from the race in Atlanta last weekend, in which NASCAR chose to issue a caution on the last lap rather than letting the field fight its way back to the start-finish line. Between Kyle Larson, Carson Hocevar, and Christopher Bell, an epic finale appeared to be developing. Many fans are demanding change in the days that followed because they felt defrauded that the race did not end under the green flag. Harvick, however, feels that the call was the right one and that attempting to improve the system will not succeed. When asked if NASCAR should change the regulation, Harvick responded, “No, we’ve been down this road,” during Harvick’s Happy Hour.
We had none at all, you know. Our endeavors were limitless. And at one Truck Series race, I believe we crashed seven or eight times. Seven or eight of our finishes were checkered in green and white. After that, we made three attempts and failed miserably on each one. Particularly when you attend the races at the superspeedway. You have to draw the line at some point and say, “We can’t just wreck every car in the field.” Being able to put all of that into perspective is a balance, you know. However, we cannot continue in this same manner. For example, we’re back to saying, “Oh, we don’t need to throw the caution; we need to race to the checkered [flag].” That’s all well, but everybody’s going to floor it and drive through everybody and somebody’s going to get hurt.
All of us desire to sprint to the checkered flag. But we can’t, you know. We will simply fail three times if we get three chances. Then it simply comes down to the fact that there is a financial component to this as well as a common sense component. We’ve gone down this path before, so I know everyone wants to. We have already experienced each of these situations. Looking at that, I think you want to watch them race back to the checkered, but adding more green-white-checkered [finishes] will only cause more damage.
Overall, Harvick raises some important issues. Increasing the number of attempts does not guarantee success, and there are many instances from the previous two seasons to draw on. Sometimes you wind up with a whimper and a lot more broken cars instead of a thrilling finish. In any case, we’re willing to wager that Kevin Harvick wouldn’t mind if NASCAR were more consistent in this regard. It will be interesting to observe how the authorities handle the problem going forward in 2025, given that two such different scenarios transpired at Daytona and Atlanta in the first two weeks.
