Kevin Harvick didn’t like what Michael McDowell did to Ryan Blaney in the final stage of the Cup Series race in New Hampshire last weekend. On the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, Harvick went after McDowell for wrecking Blaney and costing both a them a second-place finish.
“I didn’t like it. I understand Michael’s thought process of saying hey, I need to go for it, but man we weren’t even racing for the lead, we were racing for second,” Harvick said. “He just wiped Ryan Blaney out. You could probably argue the point that you want to argue as far as taking a chance, I got to try to win a race, but wiping the second-place car out for no reason is not right. I didn’t like the move at all.”
Despite Harvick not liking the move, he understood why McDowell did it. “I agree with Michael, it was a low percentage move,” Harvick said. “But it wasn’t smart. I think for me, if you’re going to make a low percentage move, you better have a car that’s fast enough to win the race. And if you’re gonna wipe him out, at least wipe out the leader.”
Michael McDowell and Ryan Blaney react to the wreck
After the race, McDowell approached Blaney and apologized for taking him out of a second-place finish. “I was in a do-or-die situation and I had to go for it,”McDowell said. “I know it was a low-percentage move, but I had to try. All the guys that went to the bottom, and one and two on those restarts got freight-trained, so I knew I needed to enter in the middle. I just got the left sides on the wet paint and it just kind of took off.
“I hate it for Blaney. I know it ruined his day, it ruined my day too and I apologized to those guys for that. But I’m at a point in the season where I have to go for it too. You don’t know until you get there, and I was just in there a little too deep.”
Blaney had a strong reaction to McDowell’s move. “I know he’s got to win and all that and that’s his excuse but you have to like calculate, be a little more calculated than that and just stinks that we’re at the expense of it,” Blaney said. “But man, I thought we had a decent shot to contend. I was happy because we came in, put tires on, made a big adjustment and I was looking forward to kind of restarting behind [Christopher] Bell and seeing if we could have anything for him and just never really got a chance.”
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