Kevin Harvick was knocked out of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Darlington after his No. 4 car caught fire during Stage 2, and he delivered an angry message in an interview afterwards.
Harvick was driving down the front straightaway and headed towards turn 1 when the right front side of his car caught fire.
“My rocker panel’s on fire,” Harvick could be heard saying on his radio.
Harvick pulled over and exited the car after the fire spread under the No. 4 Ford to the other side. A caution flag came out as Harvick exited safely.
The 46-year-old spoke with NBC Sports for an interview after the fire, and he was ticked off.
“I’m sure it’s just the crappy parts on the race car like we’ve seen so many times,” Harvick said of what likely caused the fire. “We haven’t fixed anything. It’s kind of like the safety thing; we keep going and going.”
Harvick was incredulous over the fire.
“What a disaster, man. For no reason. We didn’t touch the wall, we didn’t touch a car. And here we are in the pits with a burned-up car and can’t finish the race … during the playoffs … because of crappy a– parts,” Harvick said.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver won consecutive races at Michigan and Richmond last month and was hot entering the playoffs, but then this happened. Harvick had a bad pit stop early in the race and finished Stage 1 in 19th. He finished Stage 2 in 11th and seemed headed for a top-10 finish until the fire.
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