NASCAR: Kevin Harvick blames social media for Las Vegas penalty

Kevin Harvick has blamed the pressure from social media for the penalty he received after the NASCAR Cup Series race in Las Vegas.

Kevin Harvick won last Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Las Vegas, Nevada for his second consecutive victory in the NASCAR Cup Series in his #4 Ford for Stewart-Haas Racing.

Harvick also won the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia the previous week after crashing and finishing in 31st place in the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida to open up the season.

However, a few days after the race, Harvick was issued a penalty for violations dealing with rear window support and rocket panel extensions. As a result of this penalty, Harvick lost 20 of the 60 points he earned from the race and all seven of the playoff points he earned in it.

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These seven playoff points would have gone toward his point total in each round of the playoffs, which Harvick is still an automatic qualifier for despite the fact that his win at Las Vegas was encumbered since he won at Atlanta.

Harvick also fell from 1st place in the championship standings with 135 points to a 3rd place tie in the standings with 115 points as a result of the penalty, and he is now 17 points behind points leader Joey Logano as opposed to three points ahead of him.

Harvick, however, believes that this penalty only came as a result of pressure on social media since an image surfaced of his rear window having a bow to it, thus prompting the inevitable speculation that he must have “cheated” to do as well as he did.

Here is what Harvick had to say about the matter, according to NASCAR.com.

"“As you look at the penalty in itself, it’s very confusing. You know, I think as you look at, obviously, all the chatter that was created on social media afterwards and, you know, the whole findings of the whole thing was really started from the roof braces not working correctly in the car, that are non-mandatory braces, that exist in the back of the roof.“And that’s really what squished it down. The window bracing itself there were no issues with. The scary part, for me, is the fact that we’re, you know, we went far enough to find something on the car at the R&D center, which they could find something wrong with every car if they took it apart for a whole day at the R&D center.“I think you see some of the repercussions of finding a penalty, you know, that was big enough to make the car sufficient to have a fine big enough to, you know, to appease everybody. So that didn’t work.”"

Harvick does not think he would have been called for this penalty had it not been for the pressure of the fans on social media. It is widely believed that he would have won the race anyway regardless of the rear window brace fail. His crew chief Rodney Childers shares that viewpoint.

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Will Kevin Harvick be able to bounce back from this penalty by winning his third consecutive race in this Sunday’s TicketGuardian 500 at ISM Raceway in Avondale, Arizona, a track at which he has won eight NASCAR Cup Series race before? Tune in to the race on Sunday at 3:30 pm ET on Fox to find out.

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