Kevin Harvick calls to ditch The Clash, makes radical proposal NASCAR fans will love

Coming off the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray, Kevin Harvick has a radical new idea for the direction of the preseason, so to speak. Seeing the success the event at Bowman Gray generated, he thinks the momentum could carry over into something even more special.

But it isn’t a doubling down on Bowman Gray itself.

“I think we should get rid of it. The All-Star race and The Clash,” Harvick said on his Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast. “I loved what we did last night. I think that what we did last night was spectacular and maybe it stays an exhibition race, but imagine if that was a points race.”

In the end, the race meant little more than a chance to flex for drivers. It was a fun spectacle for the fans, but the real racing doesn’t begin for another week and a half.

Harvick believes the momentum from Bowman Gray could be used to shore up other venues and get a more robust circuit going.

“I think the effect that it had on Bowman Gray Stadium, I mean you’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on the infrastructure at that race track with safer barriers and the lights that are permanently going to stay in that stadium,” Harvick said. “That’s a big investment.

“When you look at Hickory, it’s run down and it’s one of our most historic race tracks that we have in racing. If you took that event to a Hickory Motor Speedway and upgraded the facility and fixed the grandstands and the press box and the bathrooms and the surface and pit road and the infield and made it everything that we had last night, then you’re fixing the infrastructure of your whole system.”

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The former NASCAR driver turned analyst opened up on his vision for a rotating series of events that also serves to fix up various venues in the sport.

“I think if you have that exhibition event and you move it around like that, I think that there’s definitely something to moving it around,” Harvick said. “It would be hard to take it away from Bowman Gray at this point because of the reaction to the fans and how good the racing was. But I almost think that you could try to make all these events some style of points race that you almost create a short-track series within the schedule. Where you had Bowman Gray, Hickory, pick another, any other short track across the country where you could start having this short track, maybe it’s a summer series.”

Call it a mini-playoff within the regular season, if you will. Bowman Gray could be one element to it.

“Instead of the bracket idea where you have this bracket, let’s just do it for real and make it real life and if you win the short-track summer series or grassroots series, whatever you want to call it, then you win a million bucks and put some sort of bonus that’s real life instead of some sort of bracket that’s artificial,” Harvick said.

“Let’s create some sort of grassroots, short-track series, probably three or four races. Two is not enough. But if you had something like that I think it adds some intrigue to everything that goes on and then you could attach some money to it and a little points system to go along with it.”