Kevin Harvick proposes combining NASCAR All-Star Race, Clash into one event
On the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, Kevin Harvick welcomed NASCAR’s Executive Vice President and Chief Venue & Racing Innovations Officer Ben Kennedy to the show.
During the episode, the duo chopped it up about a number of things. Harvick made a fascinating suggestion to Kennedy, proposing NASCAR combining the All-Star Race and The Clash into a singular event to give drivers and their teams an extra week off during the season.
“When you look at going and doing — well, let’s just take the special event races, the All-Star Race and The Clash. Do you ever see a time where you combine those?” Harvick stated. “Because I look at the length of the schedule right now, and my goodness, it’s not as hard for the drivers, as it is for the team guys, and sometimes I feel like, when you talk about the logistics of what they have to do to get from Michigan to Mexico City, you know, you think about all of those things.
“But when I look at the All-Star Race and The Clash, I look at — they’re very similar. Do you ever think about combining those types of races, to open up another weekend?”
Evidently, it’s something Kennedy and NASCAR’s decision-makers have spoken about, even if it’s an unlikely scenario in the future that’s at least a couple of seasons away.
“You know, we’ve talked about it,” Kennedy explained. “I think The Clash in particular being two weeks before the Daytona 500 makes sense on many levels. It’s an exhibition race. I think we’ve always said to ourselves, and we’ve heard from our fans, that we want our first points race to be at Daytona, to be at our biggest event of the year. So, kind of keeping that in mind, if you have any of these exhibition races, like The Clash, I think that’s a huge opportunity for us, to promote the Daytona 500.
“To that point, I think the All-Star Race has taken on so many different evolutions over the past few years. We were at Charlotte. Eventually we went to Bristol, went to Texas, and now we’re at North Wilkesboro. So, something we also talk about with Speedway Motorsports is what does the future evolution of the All-Star Race look like? I think there’s a theory around the All-Star Race, every weekend is the All-Star Race. We have our biggest names and our biggest drivers on all of these races. It’s a different format, and it’s a format similar to The Clash.
“So, you know, we’ve talked about all sorts of different concepts of, you know, do you continue to have the exhibition race? Do you look at something different? We’ve still got to work on what that’s going to be, but I do think that there’s an opportunity we could look at with SM.”
Kevin Harvick’s proposal would certainly be an interesting one for Ben Kennedy and his fellow decision-makers to consider, as the rigorous Cup Series schedule is nothing to scoff at, and an extra week of rest would go a long way for the drivers and their teams. We’ll see if the idea ever gets implemented.