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Despite his recent retirement, Kevin Harvick is still one of the most-respected voices in the NASCAR garage.
The former series champion and future hall of famer began his career at Richard Childress Racing in the wake of the death of legend Dale Earnhardt and never looked back.
Harvick not only became on the series’ most successful drivers of all-time, but he also became a leader of a generation of drivers.
So when he speaks, people listed.
Most recently, Harvick joined the Dale Jr. Download podcast to discuss how NASCAR could fix its NextGen car body, which has struggled to create compelling racing on certain tracks.
“I think they’re gonna take a big swing at it,” Harvick said of NextGen short track package (4:00 mark of the above video). “I think they’re gonna take a big swing at it at the Phoenix test and really try to wrangle the short track system back into where it needs to be.
“…But I just don’t know that there’s enough power in the race car. And I get it, there’s way more to it than just saying ‘hey, we need more horsepower.’ There’s the master plan of the car to bring more manufacturers and people in. But if that race car would blow the back tires off it, and you had to think about putting that throttle down, it would change the way that you race and it would change the way that the tires wear and it would just change so much.”
Harvick said that he expects NASCAR to try several things to fix the current car. But that it’ll be hard to fix “unless they go faster getting in the corner and you go slower in the middle of the corner.”
Now, this isn’t a particularly new insight.
Drivers and fans alike have called for more horsepower for several years.
But in an attempt to create closer racing and lower costs for teams, NASCAR has consistently reduced horsepower in recent years.
What’s resulted is close racing where drivers struggle to pass due to the similarity of the cars and the relative ease to drive.
Could that change going forward? Potentially.
NASCAR leadership recently said it was open to potentially adding more horsepower.
If Harvick is correct, that may well be the only way NASCAR can “save” its NextGen car.