Kevin Harvick offers strong opinion on final restart at Richmond, NASCAR’s responsibility

All anyone is talking about this week is that final restart at Richmond. Kevin Harvick got in on the discussion this week as well. The NASCAR on FOX analyst and Cup Series champion had an interesting view on the controversy.

Kevin Harvick took in the final restart at Richmond from the booth. He has been part of a lot of overtime restarts in his career. So, he’s the perfect person to weigh in on this topic. Harvick is as uninvolved as one can be. He isn’t a fan, he wasn’t in the race.

The Closer believes NASCAR can do things differently. Perhaps by using a similar method to how they hand out pit road speeding penalties.

“I’m at if you’re going to paint a line on the track you should use the line,” Harvick said on his Happy Hour podcast. “If your football team steps on the line, you’re out of bounds, right? If the ball doesn’t cross the plane, is it a touchdown? I think if you’re going to paint a line on a race track to officiate a situation, yeah none of us want NASCAR to be involved in it, but NASCAR wouldn’t even have to be involved in it.

“Put a speed line there, just like they do on pit road, make the speed entering the box X-amount, give them five miles an hour,” Kevin Harvick continued. “Whatever the pace car speed is, plus five miles an hour, and put a line across the race track and if you’re faster than that with the length of the car, that would be the nose at the line of the restart zone, the computer can call the penalty at that particular point.

“I’m all for leaving NASCAR out of it, but as a driver, we know. We know we put them in a really tough position if you go a half a car length before the restart zone at the end of the race, Denny Hamli nknew that, he knows that, every driver in the field knows that. NASCAR doesn’t want to be in the position to have to make that call. My opinion is, take yourself out of that position to make that call. You have a speed that enters the box then it is what it is and it’s going to police itself at that particular point.”

So, what is the answer? Is it adding a speed element to the restart zone? Among the actual solutions I’ve heard, this might be the best. Then again, automated officiating can be frustrating as well.

So, after hearing this from Kevin Harvick, are you on board with tweaking the zone in this way? Or is it just fine the way that it is and needs to be officiated better?