{"id":967500,"date":"2026-11-12T05:12:20","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T05:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/967500\/"},"modified":"2026-11-12T05:12:20","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T05:12:20","slug":"kevin-harvick-nascar-needs-a-gen-7-5-car-and-some-hard-conversations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/967500\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Harvick: NASCAR needs a Gen 7.5 car and ‘some hard conversations’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Harvick<\/a> has said this all along but he reiterated it on Wednesday in the aftermath of NASCAR CEO Steve O\u2019Donnell dismissing the notion of another new car for the Cup Series in the coming seasons.<\/p>\n

Harvick, the 2014 champion and a NASCAR on FOX analyst, says the current car just needs a lot more horsepower and some modifications to the underbody and single source supplier system. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don’t need Gen 8 car, but we need Gen 7.5,\u201d Harvick said on his Happy Hour show this week. \u201cYou know, we took a lot of swings at it. I think we made some things better for sure but not as much as I think needs to be done.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re going to have to look at the bottom of this race car, right? You’re going to have to look at some of the parts and pieces that you let the teams deal with and mess with. We can talk all day long about \u2018the racing was good (on Sunday) at Homestead,\u2019 but it wasn’t as good as Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy point is you’re going to have to take a swing at stuff that you don’t want to take a swing at. If you really want to make it better, you\u2019re going to have to change things on the race car you don\u2019t want to change; because they’re probably expensive and you probably have a contract with who’s making the part<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you really want to make it better, you’re going to have to make some harder decisions than changing the spoiler (size) and splitter (braces) and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

NASCAR is also wrestling with what to do with the future of the O\u2019Reilly and Truck Series, potentially making it more like the current Cup Series car, purely to create an economy where parts and pieces can be created or exchanged throughout the entire industry.<\/p>\n

Harvick says the racing on Sunday needs to be more like Saturday so that doesn\u2019t work for him. And really, he just doesn\u2019t want that traditional NASCAR platform on Saturdays to go away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also don’t think changing the O’Reilly platform is the way to go,\u201d Harvick said. \u201cI think we can keep working on<\/p>\n

Keep those parts for the cup car. \u2026 But just make the trickle down start at O’Reilly’s now and go to Truck and ARCA and Late Models to make all of this right. Cup has to be great. And right now, everything is great on Fridays and Saturdays, great ratings on The CW, so worry about the Cup car. Don’t worry about screwing up the other two. \u2026 Leave them alone. If you need to change the body, change the body. Fix the cup car. That’s what you got to concentrate on. And there’s going to be decisions that you’re going to have to make that are going to piss some people off.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like putting power back in the car. We have been talking about more power. Everyone is like \u2018we need some more power\u2019 and they have finally come around to doing a little bit of it. Quit screwing around with putting a little bit in. Put a lot in. Just make it violent and crazy to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harvick mentioned Denny Hamlin<\/a> recently calling the NextGen a \u2018Sports Car that wasn\u2019t meant\u2019 for ovals and the 2014 champion agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t want to be the jerk, but those are the facts,\u201d Harvick said. \u201cAnd if you really want to take a swing at it, you’re going to have to swing at things that you don’t want to swing at that are going to make some people mad. Engine, bottom of car, structure. It’s going to it’s going to open up a can of worms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not going to be a lot of fun to deal with, but you’re going to have to deal with it if you truly want to make it a lot better.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Harvick has said this all along but he reiterated it on Wednesday in the aftermath of NASCAR…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":967501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,190500,133509,329766,634,3628,82],"class_list":["post-967500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-homestead-miami","tag-homestead-miami-speedway","tag-kevin-harvick-nascar-needs-a-gen-7-5-car-and-some-hard-conversations","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967500","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=967500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/967501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}