Last weekend’s playoff race at Texas Motor Speedway drew plenty of criticism over the tires and officiating. So much so that Kevin Harvick voiced his frustration on social media Monday about an incident that did not involve him, saying there should be a system in place similar to Formula One.
Martin Truex Jr. crashed late in the race, and as Denny Hamlin started to slow down, William Byron hit him in the rear, admitting after the race that it was intentional. The Hendrick Motorsports driver felt Hamlin forced him into the wall on Turn 2 as they exited side-by-side.
Hamlin’s vehicle went spinning through the grass, and he was told he had to restart farther back despite his crew chief arguing he should be second because of the contact with Byron.
NASCAR senior vice president of competition Scott Miller acknowledged after the race that they missed Byron spinning Hamlin, and if they had seen the incident, NASCAR likely would’ve taken some kind of action.
“The cameras and the monitors that we’ve got, we dedicate them mostly to officiating and seeing our safety vehicles and how to dispatch them,” Miller said, per NBC Sports. “By the time we put all those cameras up (on the monitor in the control tower), we don’t have room for all of the in-car cameras to be monitored.
“If we would have had immediate access to [Byron’s] in-car camera, that would have helped us a lot, being able to find that quickly. That’s definitely one of the things we’re looking at.”
Miller added, “By the time we got a replay that showed the incident well enough to do anything to it, we had gone back to green.”
As his admission circled on social media, drivers like Hamlin and Harvick questioned how they could have missed it. In a quote-tweet response to a fan saying they wanted to see Ty Gibbs’s in-car footage for a separate incident on pit road, Harvick said, “All of these situations should be handled during the race. Just like F1 ‘under investigation’ works at any point of the race, you issue a penalty and move on. That way when you ‘don’t see it’ you can still handle during the event.”
This prompted fans to ask what other aspects from F1 the NASCAR Cup Series veteran would like to see implemented. Another was shorter races, with Harvick saying the “Daytona 500 should be the only 500 mile race.”
Additionally, another Twitter account highlighted how NASCAR only has one weekend off for the Cup Series next year and asked Harvick whether the series should have more breaks. Formula One, on the other hand, has a summer break where there is a mandatory shutdown period.
“Should be a two week break with a mandatory shut down of the shops for one week,” Harvick tweeted. “Right now we work everyone into the ground and a set week for them to plan around with their family would be a big deal.”
