Kevin Harvick reacts to Austin Dillon penalty, NASCAR ruling appeal

Kevin Harvick reacted to Austin Dillon’s penalty, and his decision to appeal NASCAR’s ruling during the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour.

The former NASCAR champion gave some interesting thoughts, including his belief that if Dillon only hit Joey Logano and not Denny Hamlin as well, Dillon would’ve been left alone. However, the double-wrecking was simply too egregious for NASCAR to ignore.

“So, I think when you go back and you assess the situation, I still believe that the first hit on Joey Logano, nobody likes the way that that was done. But I think if that was it, I just don’t think that there’s any penalty. I mean, I don’t think we get to the point that we’re at, to put NASCAR in a position to have to start making these calls, if it wasn’t for that second move on Denny Hamlin,” Harvick stated. “So, you know, I think right there, when they go back and they look at the data, you know, apparently he throttles up and gets to the back of the No. 22, and then the steering angle is excessive with the No. 11 car.

“So, that’s going to be a tough one to win in an appeal. And that’s the tough spot of where we are from a driver’s standpoint, with all the data and everything that goes with this car, and everything that you can see. So it’s, you know, I think that the appeals are always tough to win. We’ve seen several of them, one but the majority lost. I think, in this particular scenario, if we’re going to — NASCAR has to get in the middle of officiating these types of instances, or where does it stop? Where is the line in the sand?

“I think they’ve finally drawn a line in the sand, because of all the injuries and things that we have seen with this car. We see the impact that Denny Hamlin took. We’ve seen two drivers get suspended for these right-rear hooks. And I just don’t think that we can take it any further.”

Evidently, Harvick believes that with the added aggression we’ve seen from drivers due to the Next Gen vehicles, there needs to be a playbook put in to discourage simply running into the back of your opponent for position.

“You can be more aggressive with this car. You can run into people harder, and I think there has to be a little bit of rough driving officiating put into NASCAR’s playbook, or they’re just going to keep going, right?” Harvick added. “Like, we went to The Clash the first year, everybody didn’t really understand how we could push and shove like we did. By the time we got there the third time, what a mess. Yeah, what a mess. Had to do the same thing at the road courses, because of the Indy restarts.

“You know, it was just, ‘Hey, just push the guy in front of you.’ If you weren’t the guy pushing, you were getting pushed into somebody else. So, you have to be able to do that. But I hope they get to the point where they can do this immediately, if we’re going to officiate the end of the races, which they should, and they should also officiate rough driving to a certain degree, as they have been to a certain degree, but they should do it pretty quick.

“We’ve got the technology. We need to add somebody else up in the, you know, up in the tower for the officiating with Race Control from a driver’s perspective, or something like they do in other series. They’ve got to the point where we just do it instantly, because you have the data to do that.”

Time will tell how the Austin Dillon situation changes NASCAR moving forward, but Kevin Harvick believes it’ll have a profound effect, as aggressive driving has reached its limit.