Kevin Harvick’s celebration following his complete thumping of the field Sunday at Dover International Speedway has raised some eyebrows in the NASCAR garage.
During Harvick’s post-race burnout, where drivers create a smoky celebration by spinning their tires, he backed his car into the interior wall and blew the rear tires off.
The resulting damage left some wondering if Harvick intentionally meant to hurt the car — and limiting NASCAR’s chances of performing a thorough technical inspection as a result.
“He took the hot rod and just fenced it hard right in front of us,” Denny Hamlin crew chief Dave Rogers said on the team radio, according to Motorsport.com. “Drove it straight into the fence. Be awfully hard to tech that one.”
The topic came up several times during Tuesday’s media day for the second round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup, though Harvick indicated it was the first he’d heard of it.
“I did?” he said when told by a reporter he backed into the wall. “I didn’t even know.”
Informed the celebration had drawn some attention on Twitter, Harvick said, “Oh yeah?” He then added with a laugh: “I knew how to knock my car back into compliance by rubbing it up against the wall.”
Later, Harvick said he didn’t remember if he hit the wall and still wasn’t sure if he actually did. The chatter, he said, was his competition doing “what they’re supposed to do; they’re supposed to try and create commotion.”
But other drivers indicated Harvick would have known exactly what he was doing during the celebration. Hamlin said drivers “know when the tire is about to blow” and if they want to save a good car for an upcoming race, then “you don’t do that.”
“You don’t want to discredit anyone’s win because what he did was really, really impressive,” Hamlin said. “But all the other competitors, whoever doesn’t win each week wants to make sure they’re on a level playing field with whoever did win.”
“Going forward, I would like to see some kind of way of insuring our cars all stay intact for the R&D Center (tech inspection). Because right now, the R&D Center is kind of a moot point if guys tear up their cars.”
Brad Keselowski said drivers intentionally damaging their cars after the race was “absolutely” common because of the way technical inspection works. NASCAR has better tools to evaluate the cars at its facility in Concord, N.C. than it does at the racetrack, and it takes a few cars back to North Carolina for further inspection after every race.
“It’s been going on for a long time,” Keselowski said. “I’ve definitely blown tires out (after the race), yeah. I think every driver has done things to do some kind of damage to their car.”
Said Kyle Busch: “Sometimes when you’re in a burnout and you’re in the smoke, you can’t see where you’re at.”
Busch then turned to a reporter and gave an exaggerated wink.
NASCAR executive vice president Steve O’Donnell, appearing Monday on Sirius XM Radio’s The Morning Drive, said officials were “really confident” in pre-race technical inspection and weren’t concerned about Harvick trying any funny business.
“I don’t blame him,” O’Donnell said. “I think that was a huge win and most people had counted him out. That’s something we’ll certainly look at, but I chalk that up to some real enthusiasm and a guy who was just happy to move on.”
