This year’s Daytona 500 saw one of the most controversial finishes in recent years, with many drives admitting their discontent over how the race ended. Now, NASCAR star Kevin Harvick has expressed his Daytona 500 frustrations, and he made no attempt to hide his anger.
Kevin Harvick Blames NASCAR for Inconsistent Refereeing
Harvick blasted NASCAR for mishandling the final lap chaos at the Daytona 500. He revisited the incident on his “Happy Hour” podcast and pointed out that NASCAR should have thrown the caution flag as a multi-car crash erupted on the backstretch during the final lap of overtime.
"Whatever it is, it needs to be consistent." @KevinHarvick's thoughts on #NASCAR not throwing a caution flag on the final lap of the Daytona 500. pic.twitter.com/rjGQbSgGqN
— HarvickHappyHour (@HarvickHappyPod) February 18, 2025
He also highlighted the contradiction in NASCAR’s officiating by referencing what happened just three days earlier in Duel 2. In that case, NASCAR waved the yellow flag moments before Erik Jones and Austin Cindric crossed the line. Jones believed he had won at first, but since Cindric was ahead when the yellow flag came out, the Team Penske driver was instead declared the winner.
As cars crashed behind him, William Byron raced through the mayhem to take the checkered flag. NASCAR chose not to throw the caution flag this time, and Harvick is not happy with such inconsistencies.
“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.”
While Harvick isn’t convinced that racing through the wreck was the right call, consistency remains his main concern.
“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,” the 2007 Daytona 500 champion continued.
“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.”
