NASCAR: Fake outrage over Kevin Harvick’s paint scheme is laughable

The fake outrage over Kevin Harvick’s Millennial-inspired Busch Beer paint scheme for the Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race is laughable.

Prior to the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Busch Beer, one of the primary sponsors of Kevin Harvick’s #4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford, made a bet.

They bet that if Harvick did not win the championship, which would have been the second championship of his Cup Series career, they would have the 43-year-old Bakersfield, California native run a Millennial-inspired paint scheme at some point in the 2019 season.

Harvick ended up finishing the season finale in third place behind Team Penske’s Joey Logano and Furniture Row Racing’s Martin Truex Jr., two of the other three Championship 4 drivers, in first and second, respectively.

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As a result, he did not win the championship and instead ended up in third place in the championship standings.

Busch Beer stuck to their word and revealed a Millennial-inspired paint scheme, effectively a paint scheme poking fun at the Millennial or “entitled snowflake” generation, that Harvick is set to run in the Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway next Saturday night.

Included in this paint scheme are “YEET”, “#SQUADGOALS”, “TURNT LEFT”, “AF”, “Skrrrt Skrrrt”, a participation trophy stating “Congrats! You tried”, a Busch Beer can with a dog Snapchat filter among other “nods” to the Millennial generation.

Harvick himself even stated that he doesn’t know what any of this stuff means.

“I think the car and the program are a lot of fun,” he said. “It sucks losing a bet, but I’m willing to live up to my end of the deal. Through the process of the car design, I’ve learned a lot of new words, none of which make sense to me, nor could I ever use in the right context. However, it’s the All-Star race, and we have a great partner in Busch, who always like to have fun and keep things fresh. In the end, I want to win. Whether I’m driving a millennial pink car, a purple car or my normal car, it’s all about winning.”

Yet it hasn’t been the Millennial generation that has expressed a boatload of outrage — fake outrage, that is — over this paint scheme, unless, of course, the complexion of NASCAR’s fanbase suddenly made a drastic shift in the matter of a few hours and it now looks like it has never looked before.

I’m not going to be the guy to share a bunch of tweets of people complaining for no reason. But if you have any interest in seeing what, exactly, I am referring to, take a look at some of the replies to the tweet we posted earlier this week using the images provided to us by Busch Beer.

First of all, it seems as though a sizable portion of the fans that are “upset” about this paint scheme can’t seem to understand that this isn’t a car celebrating the Millennial generation and is, in fact, doing the exact opposite. Honestly, the thought of this being the case is more hilarious than the ridiculous-looking paint scheme itself.

It’s like poking fun at a politician and someone thinking that the meme doing so was intended to praise them — or a Kyle Busch meme that we share going completely over someone’s head (happens every time).

Secondly, the comments about people leaving NASCAR over this kind of thing are beyond hilarious. That seems to be the go-to line nowadays when fans don’t like something.

“THIS IS WHY PEOPLE ARE LEAVING NASCAR!!!!!!”

Literally no one is leaving NASCAR over a paint scheme that is (a) clearly a clean joke and (b) clearly directed at a part of the population of whom a sizable percentage of people couldn’t tell a stock car from a Formula 1 car.

I can’t imagine what these fans would do if the paint scheme was directed at them. Oh wait, yes I can. They’d say all over social media that they were done with NASCAR and then come back the following week and the week after that just to complain about something else that may or may not be relevant depending on the situation — just like they do when anything else is announced about and/or by NASCAR.

Have you read any comments on NASCAR-related social media posts lately? As silly as it sounds, I’m not wrong.

But complaining about a paint scheme poking fun at a generation that half or more (probably a lot more if we were to estimate an exact percentage) of NASCAR’s fanbase has no respect for anyway? That’s a whole new level of fake outrage.

Maybe Busch Beer targeted the wrong generation as far as the whole “snowflake” deal is concerned.

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Like it or not, Kevin Harvick is set to run this Millennial-inspired paint scheme in the Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. This race is scheduled to take place on Saturday, May 18, and it is set to be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1 beginning at 8:00 p.m. ET.

Let’s just hope Harvick’s car can double as a snowplow.