Kevin Harvick weighs in on green-white-checkered finish or going back to three attempts after Atlanta drama

Kevin Harvick weighed in on one of the larger controversies coming out of last weekend’s race in Atlanta, where NASCAR decided to throw the caution on the final lap, instead of allowing the field to battle back to the start-finish-line.

An epic finish seemed to be shaping up, between Christopher Bell, Carson Hocevar and Kyle Larson. Fans felt cheated out of the race not ending under the green flag, and many are clamoring for change in the days following. However, Harvick believes the call was the right one, and trying to fix the system is a losing battle.

“No, we’ve been we’ve been down this road,” Harvick said, regarding whether NASCAR needs to adjust the rule, via Harvick’s Happy Hour. “You know, we had zero. We had unlimited attempts. And we wrecked, I think, seven or eight times at a Truck Series race one time. We had seven or eight green-white-checkered finishes. And then, we went to three attempts and we just wrecked in all three of them. Especially when you get to the superspeedway races.

“At some point, you have to draw the line to say, ‘We can’t just wreck every car in the field. You know, there’s a balance of being able to put all that into perspective. But we can’t keep going around this same circle. Like, now we’re back to, ‘Oh, we need to race to the checkered [flag], and we don’t need to throw the caution.’ Well, that’s okay, but everybody’s going to floor it and drive through everybody and somebody’s going to get hurt.

“We all want to race to the checkered flag. But you know, we can’t. If we have three attempts, we’ll just wreck three times. Then it just gets to — there’s a cost factor that goes into this, and a common sense piece that goes with it, as well. So, you know — I know everybody wants to, we’ve already been down this road. We’ve already been through all these scenarios.

“I feel like as you look at that, yeah, you want to see them race back to the checkered, but if you add more green-white-checkered [finishes], you’re just going to wreck more stuff.”

All told, Harvick makes some salient points. Just because you add more attempts, doesn’t mean it’s always going to work out, and there’s plenty of examples to go off of over the last couple of seasons. Instead of an exciting finish, sometimes you end up with a whimper, and a lot more wrecked cars.

Regardless, we’re willing to bet Kevin Harvick wouldn’t mind some more consistency from NASCAR on the matter. After two very different scenarios unfolded at Daytona and Atlanta in the first two weeks, it’ll be fascinating to see how the officials police the situation moving forward in 2025.