There is a lot of talk surrounding the race lengths in the NASCAR Cup Series, with Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson saying the races are too long. 

Even IndyCar legend Scott Dixon said that Cup races were a bit of a snooze. 

But Kevin Harvick is having none of it. Across the two podcasts that Harvick does for FOX, the 2014 Cup Series winner wasn’t just critical of the talk around shortening race lengths but went on to point out what’s going wrong and where time can be saved. 

Speaking on his Happy Hour podcast, Harvick said, “We’ve shortened enough races… We don't need to shorten the length of the race. We just need to make the race more efficient."

Harvick was critical of the amount of time it took between green-flag laps at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the Brickyard 400 when a chunk of the third stage was driven under caution. 

On the SPEED with Buxton and Harvick podcast, Harvick outlined that issue and said, “It took us 12 minutes for a debris caution and 30 minutes to run two laps as Ryan Blaney wrecked right after that. So we ran two laps in 30 minutes. Our caution flags take too long for whatever reason.”

The piece of debris in question was a single piece of plastic on the front stretch that saw a lengthy caution. Harvick did point out what can be done. 

He said, “I think NASCAR may need to take a look at their procedures and the things that they need to do to speed up those processes as we go through the race to be able to make things happen a little bit quicker. How you open pit road, all those things. We could shorten the races by 30-45 minutes pretty easy just by cleaning things up. 

Harvick says get rid of caution laps between stages

At the end of each stage, once the points are tallied, the next stage begins under caution with the pit window opening only when the pace car has brought the entire pack closer together. 

Often even after the pits open and drivers stop for new tires, there are still several laps lost under caution before the pace car pulls in. According to Kevin Harvick, doing away with these cautions could prove to be a genuine time saver. 

On the same Happy Hour podcast, Harvick said, “If you’re going to shorten races, then you’re going to have to get rid of stage racing.”

Harvick pointed to the issues with stage racing and suggested a solution. “For the rain delay or we think rain is coming, there should be no cautions at the end of the stages. When the stage ends, hey, green flags, it's still out. We're in hurry-up mode. We're gonna race right through the stage.”

Harvick suggested that the leader and the top 10 get the stage points, but you continue. He reiterated that, “I don't think the races need to be shortened. I think the efficiency of the race needs to be fixed.”

By the looks of things, NASCAR has been getting this exact feedback, and they are looking at ways to shorten the caution periods, as per Mike Forde’s comments on Hauler talk. But we’ll have to wait and see what it comes to.

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason