Fans Corner NASCAR Over Unwarranted Delays After Kevin Harvick Calls Out the ‘Untimely’ Iowa Blunder

NBC kicked off its half-season coverage of NASCAR’s high-speed festivities at the Cup Series’ debut in Iowa. Apart from the slightly outdated driver graphics on-screen, there seemed to be no complaints. But wait, Kevin Harvick may have a few. And he sure isn’t venting alone.

Currently on leave from his broadcast booth duties at FOX, The Closer had more troubles than one last Sunday. It sounds like the chequered may have kept him awake, just a little too long, and he’s calling for changes. But there’s barely any secret shade on their broadcast giant counterparts. Instead, it’s more like a caution call and a remedy for the sport’s governing body that could help us save tons of time under unfortunate circumstances during that all-important race day coverage.

Kevin Harvick calls for earlier start times after the ‘late night’ Iowa race

As per NBC, the Iowa Corn 350 waved for green at 7:05 p.m. ET. All in all, the race lasted 2 hours, 58 minutes, and 37 seconds. Considering the average speed recorded at the 350-lapper on the ⅞ short track came out to be 102.874 mph, the race duration isn’t all that unbelievable at first glance. When everything was said and done, Ryan Blaney became Iowa’s inaugural victor from the Cup Series, around 10:30-ish on the USA Network’s broadcast. However, according to Kevin Harvick, his “one beef from sitting (and watching) at home is that the race started too late,” but that’s not all.

Speaking to his co-hosts Kaitlyn Vincie and Mamba Smith on his “Happy Hour” podcast, Kevin Harvick revealed another comedically transitional problem with his personal viewership experience. He said, “I didn’t really know where the USA Network was… I mean my TV didn’t pick it up for me. So I have YouTube TV… So I had to go find the channel. Usually, it just pops up everything that you watch. Apparently, we don’t watch much USA Network in our house.”

He concluded with a slight jab, referring to NBC Universal Group’s streaming platform Peacock: “So maybe next week it’ll pick it up for me unless it disappears to Peacock.”

Nevertheless, Happy Harvick expressed his ‘unhappiness’ on Sunday because of the race timings, as he duly explained himself: “I don’t understand why we started so late. The Sunday night thing was a little weird to me, I think. It was 10:30 at night. It was past my bedtime… The start time is definitely not taking into consideration anything about the teams because they all got home at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning.” 

Guess what? His co-host, Mamba Smith, also seemed to agree with those sentiments, opining, “I do miss the Saturday night races.” But Kevin Harvick informed Mamba, Vincie, and the fans that “Saturday just never does good on TV… It has to be on Sunday.”

However, coming back to the race timings, he made some hefty requests for the future with just a little oversight: “And maybe they put it later for the first one to kind of dip into the Primetime pieces of it. And I mean, they had the US Open on NBC, and it ended well before the start of the race. But it needed to be earlier. Can we get that handled, maybe?”

Here’s to hoping Harvick’s wishes come true, courtesy of his employee’s NASCAR broadcast counterpart. As for the sanctioning body’s controversial scheduling policies, Bob Pockrass had a pretty informative update that wasn’t exactly received in the best way by fans online. Especially since the venue for the upcoming weekend has faced its due share of race sequence alterations.

Rain threatens the New Hampshire race, highlighting wider scheduling woes

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Next Sunday, NASCAR heads to New Hampshire for the USA Today 301, a track that has seen the region’s diverse geography affect its weekend more often than not. Only last year, heavy showers over the racetrack forced the rescheduling of the 2023 Crayon 301 from its Sunday, July 16th date to Monday. Some might remember that a couple of years before that: the 2021 Foxwoods Resort Casino 301 at Loudon faced a 10-mile-shortening for rains, as Aric Almirola led the final few laps to score his third and final Cup career victory.

New Hampshire’s proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and its location under the polar jet stream have often given rise to severely unpredictable weather. As it all unfolds, Patch.com’s weather predictions inform spectators for Sunday’s race to be wary of rains in Loudon through this weekend, with a 40% chance on race day.

In light of last year’s halt to all excitement due to darkness spreading over the track, Bob Pockrass posted an unrelated tweet about NASCAR’s adjustment to its “rule of darkness this year to designate a time the race would end. Once that time is hit, the next flag is the white flag and following lap is checkered with no overtime.”

This post was enough to cause quite a stir over the NASCAR subreddit, considering “sunset for Loudon on Sunday is (projected at) 8:25 pm,” as one fan informed. Contrastingly, the sanctioning body has announced a 2:30 p.m. start time for this Sunday’s New Hampshire outing.

NHMS is one of those tracks hosting NASCAR races without a full-fledged lighting arrangement for the night. In the event of rain delays or other circumstantial postponements ranging over an hour, the USA Today 301 could suffer the same fate as last year’s New Hampshire race in July. Hence, another suggested that we probably “Wouldn’t need this rule if we had noon/1pm starts.”

But others also disagreed, citing “Sunset really isn’t a good base for that…” The comment rightly stated, “You can probably race past sunset if there isn’t a cloud in the sky. And have to stop way before, if it’s surrounded by dark clouds.”

But reflecting Kevin Harvick’s earlier opinions on the race teams having to suffer the most due to these rescheduling errors or natural mishaps, one fan dissected the whole issue with an impressively insightful idea.

“The difference is that the teams should theoretically know in advance when the race will end. Instead of, you know, starting a 100 lap race and finding out on lap 50 that the race will actually end at lap 75,” they wrote, explaining how prior knowledge of an ascertained duration of a race could help teams majorly “instead of gambling on race control making subjective decisions.”

On the other hand, quite strikingly, this fan made a crude yet honest observation when they said, “You’d think in the 21st century that lighting would be our LAST problem…” Regardless, the excitement can only outweigh the uncertainties for New Hampshire as we slowly approach the conclusion of one-half of the 2024 NASCAR season. Surely, the racing gods can help overturn the community’s collective anxiety come June 23rd.