Kevin Harvick declares NASCAR “left out our own” with new OEP provisional
2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick has shared his bad feeling about the new Open Exemption Provisional.
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Going into the 2025 Cup Series season, the sanctioning body made some unique changes to the rules including the addition of the Open Exemption Provisional. This gives the elite drivers from the other motorsports series the opportunity to race in the NASCAR Cup events with out the pressure of qualifying.
Trackhouse Racing and four times Indy 500 champion Helio Castroneves is set to become the first driver to use OEP in the 2025 Daytona 500. 2014 Cup Champion Kevin Harvick has shared his feelings about the rule change and pointed out that he didn’t like the change, though he likes the intent of attracting other elite drivers.
That’s the thing I don’t like about this rule, I think it caught a lot of people off guard. I love the intent and I love the fact that it’s going to attract people from other forms of racing.
Kevin Harvick said on his Happy Hour podcast.
Further talking about the point, Harvick pointed out that he disliked how NASCAR has decided not to extend the OEP to ex-Cup champions, with drivers such as Jimmie Johnson and Martin Truex Jr. racing at the Florida Beach race as well. Harvick believes that the rule change will leave a bad taste in the mouth of racers as well as others in the community.
But I didn’t like the fact that it left out our own. We’ve gone back and we’ve figured all these things out with all the guys that kind of had a bad taste in their mouth with how they’ve been treated the last couple of years.
Kevin Harvick added.
Kevin Harvick warns NASCAR against moving The Clash to international venues
In the same podcast, Kevin Harvick shared his feelings about the proposals about The Clash getting moved to an international venue. He pointed out that NASCAR should not offend grass roots fans by sacrificing classic tracks for new flashy venues.
I think you’ll offend our grassroots fans of places like Bowman Gray that you could affect your own house here in our country instead of trying to make global. Let’s fix the structure of our system that we have here from the grassroots up, and you could use our biggest stars to do it.
Kevin Harvick said.
The comments from Kevin Harvick seems to be something many in the community align with. But at the same time, moving the exhibition events to other tracks is better than moving the points race. It would be interesting to see how NASCAR is going to approach this issue.
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Justin P Joy
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