Kevin Harvick slams NASCAR over horsepower, offers proof from Las Vegas: 'Fix the damn problem'

Going as far back as 2015, NASCAR has incrementally decreased the horsepower of engines capable of producing over 900. Kevin Harvick believes the sport has gone too far.

Speaking on his “Happy Hour” podcast earlier this week, the FOX Sports analyst went on a rant about the lack of horsepower in the Next Gen car. Harvick mentioned the wide-open qualifying at Las Vegas this past weekend, calling it “dumb.”

“It’s absolutely ridiculous that we went to an unrestricted mile-and-a-half, and they qualified wide-open. What in the world do we need to do to get more horsepower? This screams horsepower to me,” Harvick said. “This is not a good scenario. I’ve heard all the things about different manufacturers and different this and different that, but I haven’t seen it. Put some damn power in the cars. Wide-open qualifying at an unrestricted mile-and-a-half racetrack is dumb.”

Harvick wants as much horsepower as possible in the cars; he’s not alone in that assessment. With the exception of high-banked drafting tracks where speed is reduced, engines are capped at 670 horsepower. That’s not nearly enough, three-time Cup Series champion Joey Logano said last year.

“We want more power,” Logano said, via Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “It increases tire wear. It makes the track wider. And it’s more badass.”

Kevin Harvick heated at lack of horsepower in NASCAR

NASCAR Chief Racing Development Officer John Probst previously shut down calls for more horsepower. Probst said last March it would be too big a gamble given the risks.

“If you add the horsepower, you add the cost, then you see if it is better,” Probst said. “There’s no guarantee you get there, and it would be any better. And I think there’s some evidence that shows as we add horsepower, they run further apart.

“There’s some that shows it’s better … and there’s some other shows no, might not be. So that’s a heck of a gamble to take with the entire industry.”

But Harvick believes there’s an issue. As he sees it, NASCAR has avoided fixing the real problem.

“If your shoes gave you blisters on your foot, and they felt uncomfortable all the time, would you keep putting those shoes on? I don’t know why we keep putting the same shoes on,” Harvick said. “Why can’t we just fix the damn problem? We’ve spent millions of dollars on aerodynamics and now we’re qualifying wide-open. They made the left side tire that much softer, and they’re just hammer down.”