Kevin Harvick's novel idea for the Clash: Combine it with the All-Star Race

“You look at the race the other night and it isn’t all about the pole winners anymore,” Harvick said. “You have people in the field that didn’t win a pole and made the playoffs, so we are kind of making things up to make the field big enough anyway. Why not just take a couple of the pole winners who are pole winners and not eligible for the All-Star race and make a couple slots in the All-Star race. The Clash can be a huge distraction for the teams. Look at a guy like Joe Gibbs from the owners’ side of it and they wiped out [four] cars. That is a million to two-million dollars worth of equipment that got torn up.

“My big thing as we go forward is looking at how we change things, shorten the season up, do these different things. I would be in favor of eliminating the Clash as one of those weekends that you could put a points race in there.”

“I am still of the opinion that we should rotate the last race around to different race tracks by moving the [end of the season] back up into October,” Harvick said. “If we end it there you open up a lot of markets that could host the championship race. The All-Star race, it is the same way. It needs a breath of fresh air too. You could rotate that around and make some cool events out of it. I am of the opinion that none of the playoff races should ever be the same year to year and the championship race shouldn’t be the same year to year. It should rotate around and I think that the second Daytona race would be a great race 26 race, last race of the playoffs race, because everyone can win and you build in a story before the season even starts about how everybody still has a chance and you don’t have that dull moment of your last points paying race.

“I think there are a number of things. These are things I am sure everybody else is thinking about but the Clash is one of those things that I would put on my agenda if I was in charge of things to look at. Just because of the fact that, in my opinion, the All-Star race and the Clash are kind of the same thing and both don’t always have enough cars in the field to make the race what everybody wants it, so why not combine them.”