Kevin Harvick wants to see rotation of the NASCAR schedule
The 2019 NASCAR schedule features the same tracks. However, the playoffs feature a rotation. Louden has been replaced with Las Vegas. Richmond and the Charlotte Roval have been moved to the first round. In addition, Indianapolis will now end the regular season.
“What Marcus and those guys did at Charlotte, to put the Charlotte Road Course on the schedule — They really mixed it up in the first round with Richmond and the road course,” Kevin Harvick said from the media center.
“You have Indianapolis which is an important market for us because there’s so many race fans in Indy. Especially when you look at the TV ratings. We need to make sure that race is more successful than it has been.”
“There’s way more involved. I’m just speaking from a guy who’s wingin’ it over here. Two publicly traded companies that have investors.”
“I like change. I like a rotation of the last 10 races. I like a rotation of the championship race. I like moving the All-Star race around to different cities. To have these cities participate in what they’re doing.”
“If we could just back that season end up a month, you open up a lot of markets. I think you could put 6-8 tracks in the championship race mix and mix those other 9 races with different race tracks.
Backing up the season ending by a month opens up markets like Texas and Georgia. The reason NASCAR goes to Florida at the end of every season is because it’s somewhat warm as the rest of the country is frozen. Backing up the ending by a month, opens up a few other markets that wouldn’t typically work for a November race date.
“Every year, you’re going to have a built in conversation. That’s the part that I think we’re missing is that conversation piece.”
“It’s not fair to Texas Motor Speedway to not have an opportunity to have the championship race, to build their race market. If you have a championship race here and you bring people here that haven’t been here before. They’re going to come back for the next one when it’s on it’s regular date.”
“We have to build this enthusiasm in every race market. Hopefully there’s a longer term plan as to something like that.”
“Whether you think it would be a good race or bad — It shouldn’t matter. It’s the championship race! The Superbowl and the World Series aren’t always good but it’s never about the game. It’s always about the event.”
“If you have a great race or a great game to go with that, it just adds to that moment of the event that you have built.”
“I don’t even think we should call them all races. We should call them events. They should all be events where you have things to do then you show up from the race and everybody’s already had a good time and hopefully the race is good too then you can talk about that on the way home.”
Homestead-Miami Speedway has been hosting the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship since 1999.
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