AVONDALE, Ariz. – Long known for being a driver in the garage area who is unafraid to speak his mind, Kevin Harvick faced the media on Friday at ISM Raceway and offered a loud opposition to the penalties issued by NASCAR to his Stewart-Haas Racing team after their dominant win one week earlier.
Harvick led 214 of 267 laps during the Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last Sunday, but the performance came under fire on social media after pictures surfaced of an apparent dip in the rear window pane of the No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford during the race.
Though the car cleared at-track post race inspection, when it got back to the NASCAR R&D Center, series officials confirmed that things were amiss – finding both a broken rear window brace that did not conform to specifications for keeping the glass rigid “in all directions, at all times” and rocker panel extensions (side skirts) that were not aluminum.
As a result of those issues, the team was docked 20 driver and owner points, crew chief Rodney Childers was fined $50,000 and car chief Robert Smith was suspended for the next two Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races.
Harvick also lost the seven playoff points he accumulated for sweeping the two stage wins and going on to win the race.
The cumulative hit from the penalties was something that the 2014 Cup champion believes was much too harsh.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” Harvick affirmed. “When you look at the penalty itself, it is very confusing. With all the chatter that was created on social media afterwards – the whole findings of the thing started with the roof braces not working in the car, which are non-mandatory braces that exist in the back of the roof. That is what squished it down. The window bracing itself, there were no issues with. When you look at the perpendicular bar, there is no specific way it says it has to be connected. Ours is connected. As you look at the bracing itself, there was no issue with that. The roof caved in, pulled the back and top of the window down, and that is really the root of the social media outrage that came after the race.”
“The car passed all the optical scanning station inspections and everything after the race. The car was built to tolerance. The scary part for me is the fact that we went far enough to find something on the car at the NASCAR R&D center. They could find something wrong with every car if they took it apart for a whole day at the R&D center. The side skirt material is on us. That rule was put into place February 18th, and it should have been aluminum, but ours was steel. That is really kind of the meat of what gave them the ability to actually get the fine to where it was meaningful enough to appease everyone on social media.”
