Kevin Harvick believes Ryan Blaney’s pit troubles during the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway were a microcosm of a larger issue in the NASCAR Cup Series.
First off, during the latest episode of Harvick’s Happy Hour, the former NASCAR Cup Series champion explained what went wrong for Blaney during the race he won in 2023, as a loose-wheel ended up causing him to wreck, ending his evening even earlier than Mother Nature ended the race.
“Well, they left the wheel loose, it looks like to me, and then it sawed the wheel in-half, and then the wheel fell off and he banged into the wall,” Harvick stated. “So this is the aftermath of what you’re seeing here. But Blaney — they were going to be in the top ten, I felt like. Pretty solid.
“Played a good strategy there, and wound up getting the track position that they needed. But ultimately, in the end, didn’t play out for them all night, and wound up with a bad finish.”
While the loose wheel was the culprit for Blaney’s trouble, Harvick believes there’s a larger issue at play, involving pit crews trying to save every second they can on pit road, and it’s not always working out in the favor of their driver.
“I think that’s just where we live now,” Harvick explained. “I think, trying to get those mid-to-high eight-second pit stops, right? If you don’t try to make those pit stops, somebody else is going to, and we’ve seen a lot more mistakes, week-in and week-out, because of how fast the pit stops are, and they’re on the edge of disaster every freaking time that they put. And so, we see those mistakes, and everybody knows that they have to get everything that they can, whether it’s changing the tires, in the pit stall, rolling the tire — whatever that is, you have to be right on the edge of disaster.
“We hear the drivers talk about erring to the side, when they’re racing or driving, of being too aggressive, and I think that’s where the pit crews are as well, because they have to make these fast pit stops, and their margin of error is slim.”
Alas, Ryan Blaney and the No. 12 team would love to have their pit stop during the Coca-Cola 600 back, but all they can do is learn from their mistake moving forward. Kevin Harvick will be keeping an eye on how their pit stops change moving forward, if they do.
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