After the July 21 race in Indianapolis, NASCAR will take a break for two weeks, returning on Aug. 11 in Richmond due to the 2024 Olympics.
Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski believe a slight break becoming a permanent part of the Cup Series’ schedule wouldn’t be a bad idea. The two former champions chopped up the scenario on the latest edition of Harvick’s Happy Hour for Fox.
“I think that there needs to be some sort of break in the middle of the year for the employees,” Harvick prefaced. “You guys as owners need to get together and say, ‘Okay, we need to take (at least) one week off.’ Everybody has to lock those doors so that those employees can say, ‘I’m going on vacation.’ Maybe that’s a conversation for another day.”
While Harvick threw it out there on camera, Keselowski revealed he’s actually talked with other team owners about creating a permanent break in the NASCAR schedule, but it was shot down. Still, he believes the idea is an important one.
“No, let’s talk about it. I sit in, in a lot of those types of meetings, and I pushed hard for that this past fall, winter, whatever it was, during the offseason like, ‘Guys, we need to do an industry shutdown,’ because we have the two-week Olympics break, which I think is great. Let the Olympics have their heyday. There’s great stories, everybody loves the Olympics. It’s great for our sport to get a break, to not have to compete against the Olympics. Everybody wins,” Keselowski explained. “So I made a really hard push to the other team owners like, ‘Hey, let’s all get together and shutdown. We’ll all just kind of lock our doors for a week or two, all the employees go home, go on vacation, go spend some time with your kids, refresh, and kind of reload for what is the final half of the season.’ Unfortunately, that kind of fell on some deaf ears, but I think it’s something that our sport needs to really, really consider. It’s one of those things where all the team owners have to do it. Like, it just can’t be like half of them, or it doesn’t work. It’s really hard to get all the team owners into kind of that state of mind.
“But the biggest reason why I think it’s important is because our sport really relies on this ambassador type relationship, whether it’s with our fans, or with the junior level, and we need those people. It’s more than just me. We need the whole garage area to be in a good mindset, and to not be burnt out, so it tells our story, to those kids that might be in the stands wanting to be a racer someday, and to those fans that are coming, that when they have engagements with our crew members, or our drivers or whoever it might be, they’re good engagements, and not the, ‘Man, I’ve been on the road for 30 straight weeks and I’m tired’ engagements.”
Perhaps a permanent one or two-week summer break would be good for NASCAR. Absence does make the heart grow fonder. Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick could be onto something, if the rest of the NASCAR world would listen to their ideas.
The post Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski suggest mid-season break for NASCAR teams appeared first on On3.