Kevin Harvick asks NASCAR to “combine” All-Star race and The Clash

2014 Cup champion Kevin Harvick has asked NASCAR to explore the merger on non-point paying races to give teams one more week off.

Kevin Harvick asks NASCAR to “combine” All-Star race and The Clash

Kevin Harvick (Via IMAGO)

The NASCAR Cup schedule hosts a massive 38 races a season, including the All-Star events as well as The Clash. With the sport expanding its market into diverse tracks without changing a race a week format, it’s getting hard for the teams to keep its crew away from burnout. Its only going to increase with the sport having plans to explain internationally.

Ex-Cup champion Kevin Harvick has shared his opinion on the physically taxing expansion of the schedule and how NASCAR should solve it. He has the wild preposition of merging the All-Star race and The Clash. Harvick wants the sanctioning body to create an extra off weekend by the merger as he thinks the non-paint paying races are very similar.

YouTube video
When you look at going and doing — well, let's just take the special event races, the All-Star Race and The Clash. Do you ever see a time where you combine those?... But when I look at the All-Star Race and The Clash, I look at — they're very similar. Do you ever think about combining those types of races, to open up another weekend?
Kevin Harvick said via Happy Hour podcast.

The comments made by Harvick is bold, but makes a lot of sense. It wont hurt NASCAR to have the All-Star race as season opener instead of the clash, It will help to reduce the cost, can market it as a more high stakes event and it will give the teams time to get away from the pressure of the sport in the season.

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Kevin Harvick asserts the crew is more affected by huge schedules

While talking about the schedule, he pointed out that though it is hard for the drivers to race every week, it is much harder for the crew as they have more work to do. He highlighted the logistical nightmares while traveling to tracks like Michigan and Chicago as an example.

Kevin Harvick
Kevin Harvick (Via IMAGO)
Because I look at the length of the schedule right now, and my goodness, it's not as hard for the drivers, as it is for the team guys, and sometimes I feel like, when you talk about the logistics of what they have to do to get from Michigan to Mexico City, you know, you think about all of those things.
Kevin Harvick said.

The ex-SHR driver is absolutely spot on with the comment as any unwanted change to the schedule affects the crew the most. It will be interesting to see if NASCAR explore the suggestions made by Harvick to solve this issue at hand.

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