NASCAR comes under fire from semi-retired driver for Talladega pile up

Semi-retired NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick, who last raced for Stewart-Haas Racing, blasted NASCAR for the way it handled the huge crash involving 28 cars at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, even touching upon the sport's Damage Vehicle Policy (DVP).

Harvick explained the detailed information about Talladega's biggest crash as he described the events that unfolded on Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour with Kaitlyn Vincie and Mamba Smith, going to the extent of calling the event a "complete sh**show." He also pointed out how NASCAR selectively towed certain cars after the incident, while choosing to leave others behind. He said:

“I have a lot of information, but I don’t think I need to go too far because it was a complete sh**show."

He added:

“Well sh*t, we’ve wrecked enough cars that if we don’t pull all 28 or 25 or how many cars are sitting in the infield, hell I don’t even know if we can have a race.

“So, you know what, let’s tow this one back, let’s tow that one back, let’s leave this one here, like whose decision is it? Now we’re going to tow completely destroyed race cars and we’re going to tow some back that are really wrecked — 9, 14 — we’re going to tow those cars back to the pit stall.”

Harvick then stated how selective towing could affect the point system. He said:

“Let’s just say those cars didn’t get going again, they missed the DVP (Damage Vehicle Policy) clock. So now they’ve crossed these loops and things different than the cars that were in this wreck. Now we are affecting points from all different kinds because you decided to tow this one not that one, this one went that way and that one went this way.

"…Just by the decisions NASCAR made, we could completely screw up the whole point system in a way this all worked out because of who they decided to tow and who they didn’t decide to tow. So now we’ve got a mess on our hands with the whole DVP thing and who gets towed back. Just tow them all back to the pit stall, please. Let the team determine who’s going to do what.”

NASCAR vice president of competition, Elton Sawyer, stated that the sport would look into the DVP during the offseason to ensure it remains beneficial. Speaking after the Talladega race on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, he said:

“With that program and with that policy, we’ve said that we were gonna take a deeper dive into it in the offseason just to make sure it’s still providing the efficiencies, it’s still providing the benefits that we want from that.

“But be also able to correct some things that obviously hasn’t worked as well with that policy that we’ve liked. Our goal from day one when this policy came into place was not to put good cars or good trucks out of the race.”