NASCAR: Kevin Harvick inadvertently sent another message

A bitter Kevin Harvick inadvertently sent another message on Sunday when he attempted to end Chase Elliott’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff run.

It didn’t happen in the first two races of the round of 12 of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, but it happened in the round finale at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.

Kevin Harvick, still not over the fact that Chase Elliott went out of his way to cost him the win at Bristol Motor Speedway after contact between the two drivers when battling for the lead resulted in a flat tire for Elliott, intentionally sent Elliott into the wall early in the third and final stage of Sunday’s race.

This left Elliott below the round of 8 cut line and with a severely damaged #9 Chevrolet, while Harvick, as long as William Byron wasn’t the leader, found himself above that cut line.

This would change in a big way by the time the race ended.

Elliott was able to rally, in part thanks to a caution caused by debris from his own car, and approach Harvick on the track, at which point he had worked his way back ahead of the round of 8 cut line.

Before he could get to the #4 Ford, however, Harvick went sailing off into the turn one barrier.

This ended Harvick’s race and thus his chance to advance to the round of 8, and it all but solidified Elliott a spot in the third round, not even an hour after it looked as though the 2021 season would be the second in a row to see the reigning champion fail to make it beyond the round of 12.

At the end of the day, Harvick’s decision to try to get revenge on Elliott didn’t pay off in any way shape or form, and from listening to the crowd (they weren’t cheering “Let’s go Kevin!”), it was quite obvious that he made somewhat of a fool of himself.

And instead of sending the “real-life” message he claims he was trying to send, he sent another message, a message which he solidified by the fact that he refused to say whether or not he felt that the two were “even” and if the feud would end there.

That message? He knows he never had a chance.

Harvick was not fearing retaliation from Elliott. Even if Harvick would have advanced and Elliott been eliminated, he still would not be fearing it. But it sure would have come.

Some even speculated that Elliott would go for retaliation on Sunday, even though he had already worked himself from several points below the cut line to comfortably above it by the time he (almost) got back to Harvick.

Harvick, of course, took care of that himself.

Harvick had no reason to worry about retaliation because he knows retaliation isn’t what could cost him a shot at the championship. He knew he had no chance at the championship.

Yea, yea, yea, “never give up”. Lip service.

The 2021 season has been disastrous for Stewart-Haas Racing, and they are still nowhere near the likes of Joe Gibbs Racing, Hendrick Motorsports, or even Team Penske, the only three teams represented in the round of 8.

After a nine-win 2020 season, Harvick failed to win a single race or a single stage in this year’s regular season, and his only two playoff points entering the postseason came due to his ninth place finish in the regular season standings. It has been more than a full calendar year since he won a race.

Harvick has said himself that the problem with the team isn’t with the cars, but that there is another internal struggle consistently plaguing the team, and figuring out how to fix it has been a huge task which has yet to be achieved — even 32 races into the 36-race season.

He had no chance, and he knew it.

So after losing what will probably end up being his best chance at a win in 2021, that frustration reached a boiling point, and the winless Harvick simply figured that the best way to make something out of the remainder of his playoff run was to try to screw over the driver who got in the way of that potential victory, even if it did happen more than three weeks ago.

With that in mind, the question is now whether or not more of what he would describe as “chickensh*t” moves are on the way from the driver of the #4 Ford.