NASCAR executive Scott Miller seemingly wasn’t thrilled with the comments made by Kevin Harvick after the Cook Out Southern 500 on Sunday, but did admit the recent number of car fires was “unacceptable.”
Miller, senior vice president of competition, responded to Harvick’s comments during an appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s “The Morning Drive” on Tuesday.
“To say that NASCAR didn’t care is about as far from the truth as you could get,” Miller told the station, as transcribed by NBC Sports. “That’s really all I have to say about that. I’m not going to get into any kind of back-and-forth contest with Kevin over the airwaves. I think he actually does know we do care.”
Miller added of Harvick’s fire: “We’re not certain if rubber getting into the rocker box was the problem or not. We’re debriefing it all. It’s unacceptable for the cars to catch on fire.”
The occurrences of fires inside cars have been more of a problem for Fords this season. It’s also occurred with Chris Buescher and Joey Logano at Indianapolis and Chase Briscoe at Richmond.
“I’m sure it’s just crappy parts on the race car like we’ve seen so many times,” Harvick initially blasted after Sunday’s race, per NBC Sports. “They (NASCAR) haven’t fixed anything. It’s kind of like the safety stuff. We just let it keep going and keep going.”
The driver of the No. 4 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing has been critical of NASCAR and the Next Gen car multiple times this season.
