Kevin Harvick rips NASCAR for Daytona 500 controversial ending: 'I left the booth mad'

Kevin Harvick was mad leaving the FOX broadcast booth after Sunday’s 67th running of the Daytona 500.

Harvick, speaking on his “Happy Hour” podcast, said he took issue with NASCAR not throwing the caution flag out as the multi-car wreck ensued down the backstretch on the final lap of overtime. Just three days earlier in Duel 2 at Daytona, NASCAR threw the yellow out just before Erik Jones and Austin Cindric reached the start/finish line. Jones crossed the line first and thought he had won the race. But Cindric was ahead when the caution came out, giving him the win.

The caution flag never came out Sunday, and William Byron escaped through the carnage to take the checkered flag. Harvick lamented the lack of consistency in officiating during the week at Daytona.

“I’m happy for William, I’m happy that everybody’s OK. But I’m not happy with — and we talked about it this preseason, one of the things that I said and what I expected and hoped for this season, was that we got some consistency in the officiating — and it couldn’t have been more inconsistent,” Harvick said. “Thursday night, we throw the caution in The Duel a couple hundred yards beforehand. … So many times, we have so many great things happening and whatever it is, it needs to be consistent. And it couldn’t have been more inconsistent from Thursday to Sunday, and for me, that’s the tough thing.

“I left the booth mad. I was like I just don’t understand what I just watched. And you can say we dispatched the truck, we dispatched the truck from the backstretch, the safety vehicles, you got safety vehicles on the other side too, you got safety vehicles on the frontstretch, so I’m just not buying all that BS. I think they’re just inconsistent calls and we gotta pick a direction. Are we gonna throw the caution when there’s cars wrecking hard? Because the cars all wreck hard, like there’s not a soft wreck. If we’re gonna throw the caution a hundred feet from the finish line, surely, we can throw the caution going into Turn 3.”

Kevin Harvick sounds off on Daytona 500 finish

Harvick added he’s not sure that he agrees with driving through the wreck. But whatever direction NASCAR goes, the former Cup Series champion just wants consistency and less controversy.

“I don’t know that I agree with driving through the wreck when the last time we had this come to a head, we all didn’t lift and shoved Austin Dillon into the fence at Daytona. You can’t just go this direction and say, ‘Well, everybody’s griping about it, so we’re just gonna go down this road until somebody gets hurt again.’ You can’t have it both ways. It doesn’t work,” Harvick said. “Really, what everybody needs I think is some consistent direction on how this is gonna go in the future. And they’re gonna say, ‘Well, every situation is different.’ It’s not different at the superspeedways, they’re all wrecking. I get it, Riley Herbst didn’t spin out, don’t throw the caution right there. Pretty easy.

“On Thursday night, let them cross the finish line. I think everybody understands it would have been half a second. And this one, I just quit talking on the broadcast because I was like surely, they’ll throw the caution, and we just need to lay out right here because it’s over and we need to let them review the video to make sure they know who won. We don’t wanna call it too soon. Thursday night, we had a guy celebrating on the front straightaway and didn’t know the caution came out. I just don’t like the inconsistency. I think that’s the thing that bites us in the ass all the time is not being consistent with [what I thought] was an easy call.”