{"id":248694,"date":"2025-10-29T21:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T21:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/248694\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T21:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T21:18:10","slug":"kevin-harvick-warns-nascar-of-a-playoff-meltdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/248694\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Harvick Warns NASCAR of a Playoff \u201cMeltdown\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Harvick<\/a> says if Corey Heim<\/a> and Connor Zilisch<\/a> don\u2019t win it all this season, NASCAR\u2019s championship format will have a big credibility problem.<\/p>\n

On his Kevin Harvick\u2019s Happy Hour podcast<\/a>, the 2014 Cup Series champion said it would be \u201ca nuclear meltdown\u201d if Heim or Zilisch don\u2019t win their titles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at Corey Heim\u2019s stats compared to everybody else, if he doesn\u2019t win this championship, it\u2019s going to be a nuclear meltdown,\u201d Harvick said. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t even be a question of who the champion is in the Truck Series. It shouldn\u2019t be a question of who the champion is in the Xfinity Series.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heim has had one of the most dominant seasons in Truck Series history with 11 wins<\/a> in 24 starts and an average finish of 5.5. Zilisch, an 18-year-old rookie in the Xfinity Series, has 10 wins<\/a> in 31 starts and an 8.2 average finish. Both drivers lead their respective standings by a big margin entering the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Harvick says dominance should matter more than drama<\/p>\n

\"NASCARScott Kinser-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Harvick said the playoff format\u2014which resets points and allows one bad finish to wipe out a season\u2019s worth of work\u2014undermines performances like those.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Connor Zilisch and Corey Heim don\u2019t win these championships, it\u2019s exactly why we don\u2019t need the system we have,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harvick went on to say NASCAR should reward consistency over drama.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe right change is to make as many points matter as possible for as long as possible,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to have a playoff, you better make the points matter as much as possible, or these people are going to eat you up.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pointed to Heim\u2019s 100-point lead over his closest competitor as proof the current system can distort results.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell you, if Tyler Ankrum wins the championship and Corey Heim doesn\u2019t, it\u2019s embarrassing to the Truck Series,\u201d Harvick added.<\/p>\n

Harvick\u2019s comments touch on a familiar debate in NASCAR. Playoff supporters say it creates drama and unpredictability. Critics, including Harvick, say it punishes season-long dominance and turns the title fight into a one-race lottery. If they don\u2019t win, it will be chaos.<\/p>\n

\t\t\"avatar\"<\/p>\n

\t\tMy love for motorsports started in my childhood in Tunisia, watching races with my family. Fast forward to today, … More about Farah Ben Gamra<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Harvick says if Corey Heim and Connor Zilisch don\u2019t win it all this season, NASCAR\u2019s championship format…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,9398,28942,25423,634,18243,7576,82],"class_list":["post-248694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-connor-zilisch","tag-corey-heim","tag-kevin-harvick","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-truck-series","tag-nascar-xfinity-series","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}