The idea of issuing penalties based on social media outcry was another thing that Harvick brought under fire during his media conference on Friday.
“There was probably 20-some cars in the field that you could call that same penalty on for the bracing and windshield attachment. If you really want to go through pictures (to call penalties), that is a slippery slope. We’ve seen a lot of pictures pop up from previous years and previous events and some events this year of window bracing failures, which we didn’t have.”
“It is what it is. I can tell you how we have dissected it from a team standpoint. … If you look at golf and the fan officiating and the chaos that it caused, now here, I think you see some of the repercussions of finding a penalty that was big enough to appease everybody. That didn’t work in golf. It won’t work here. I think as you look at it, you have to take it and move on and you just deal with it and go forward.”
Just like Childers earlier in the week on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Harvick affirmed that he felt he would have won the Las Vegas race regardless of the rear window issue.
“Absolutely, hands down I believe we would have won that race regardless,” he said. “If you look at Atlanta, the car was there the week before. It was the same team, same window bracing, same roof, same side skirts, same everything. It was in the R&D center the week before and it has been there 49 times in (the last) three years.”
But Harvick added that the interpretation of certain rules was something that bothered him in this particular case.
“It’s technicalities. If you have to find a technicality that is that deep, that is the thing that is frustrating from a team standpoint … and especially the explanation, when you look at the window bracing and the way the window is attached to the car,” said Harvick. “You could call that penalty on any car in the field at some point. I have had window braces smashed in the front of my car, several times. They fail all the time in the front.”
“If we want to officiate it with fan pictures and if you want to officiate it with pictures during the race and call people to pit road and do those types of things … from a NASCAR standpoint, I am fine with that as long as it is consistent. As you can see, from a lot of the pictures roaming around on the internet this week, it is not consistent.”
At the end of the day, the penalties dropped Harvick from the lead in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series standings to third, despite the fact that he gets to keep credit for his 39th-career premier series victory.
But Harvick wasn’t – and isn’t – focused on any of what had already happened.
Instead, he’s looking ahead and ready to recapture the magic of the one-mile oval in the desert where he’s won a record eight times in the past.
“This just motivates us,” he said confidently. “I can’t wait to win another race and jump up and down in victory lane on the back of my car.”
