Kevin Harvick reacts to Joey Logano, NASCAR penalty: 'That can't happen'

Mostly lost in the shuffle over Austin Dillon’s penalty for wrecking Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin in the final lap of the Cook Out 400 was the penalty Logano received over revving his engine on pit road in front of a bunch of people.

Logano was docked $50,000 by NASCAR for the incident, which rubbed many the wrong way.

“I think that Joey knows that was wrong,” Kevin Harvick said on the Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast. “I think when you go back and watch the in-car camera footage of Joey going down pit lane, yeah they motioned him to the inside because they wanted to interview him at the end of pit road. So he had to go by all the cars, go to the end of pit road with the top five cars to do his interview because he was one of those cars that was requested because he was a storyline and that’s how this works.

“The part I don’t like is when he revs the engine up, spins the tires, he’s got toe links broken in the back and yeah there were too many people on pit road. Those people should not have been on pit road. I agree with all that. But you can’t do that.”

Harvick joked that he’s made many poor decisions like the one Joey Logano made after the Cook Out 400. Still, it’s something that can’t happen.

“Look, I’ve done some dumb things and I’m right there in the dumb category, but you can’t rev your engine,” Harvick said. “I mean there’s little kids and wives and girlfriends and people and sponsors and officials, but he went by three or four different officials to get to that group of people and then just put on a huge burnout right there, so that can’t happen.”

That Joey Logano reacted the way he did is at least partially understandable. He was coming off an incredibly frustrating race where he had the win ripped away from him by some questionable contact.

Moreover, once he realized who it was that had taken him out, the whole thing got even worse.

“When you go back and look at the restart, I mean Logano just beat him on the restart,” Harvick explained. “Beat him fair, passed him clean and I think that’s also why Logano was a little bit frustrated, because he felt like he did a really good job, did it fair and square and then just got run over.

“I can see it from everybody’s perspective. Austin Dillon’s perspective, I get it. Joey Logano, I get it. Poor guy Denny Hamlin, though. I don’t know. And he understood the scenario that Austin Dillon was in. So it’s a tough scenario and I’m glad there’s some sort of bottom to the whole thing as far as line in the sand, because we were getting pretty low in the things that you had to stoop down and do.”