Kevin Harvick breaks down the 'big one' at Daytona 500

Kevin Harvick had a unique perspective for the 2024 Daytona 500, as it was his first one in the FOX broadcast booth, rather than behind the wheel.

The former NASCAR Cup Series champion watched as William Byron survived to win The Great American Race, but he turned his attention to the wreck that took out some of the top contenders, including Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski and Denny Hamlin, during his Harvick’s Happy Hour show.

“That’s how these speedway races are now. Joey Logano controlled the race all day. I felt like he was in control most of the day, of doing what he needed to do for his particular team, and Ford. No matter where they were, he found his way back to the front. They were able to position themselves to save gas. That all changed like that. He was running P2, P3. We saw it happen throughout the duels. We saw it happen throughout the beginning of the race. We saw it in different situations, and when you get down to the end of the Daytona 500, there isn’t anybody who cares about anything,” Harvick explained. “They’re all going to do whatever they have to do to try to win, and they don’t care about wiping their car out, they don’t care about wiping the next guy out.

“The pushes just kept getting harder and harder and hard, and as soon as those cars become misaligned a little bit, when those big pushes shove them off.”

Additionally, Harvick elaborated on his thoughts, relaying his belief that if the wreck didn’t come when it did, it was going to happen regardless, as you could tell by the way the field was racing for a majority of the third stage.

“At the end, you definitely could feel it. It was just a matter of when it was going to happen,” Harvick added. “They were three-wide. Pushing and shoving. You just didn’t know when it was actually going to happen. They tried several times as we led up to the actual wreck itself. I think it wiped out 18 cars. A lot of the good cars that were up in the front. There were actually — 18 was probably a lower number than it looked like on television, because we had multiple in-car cameras, and a lot of big shots.

“When you look at these in-car shots, and you see the driver’s head start to wiggle forward. A lot of the bigger shots come from getting hit in the back of the car, and the whiplash that actually comes with the rear impact. But man, there were some big, big hits.”

Alas, Kevin Harvick knows “The Big One” is inevitable at Daytona, and it ended the night of many of the sport’s top contenders, but William Byron survived long enough to get the win, and the former Daytona 500 champion himself knows that’s what it takes to win the race.