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Dale Earnhardt Jr Joins Kevin Harvick and Hailie Deegan in Support of Controversial NASCAR Race Duration Discourse

Published 04/13/2022, 11:55 AM EDT

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You know you might have a problem at hand or something to address when three completely different NASCAR drivers from three completely different eras, backgrounds, and personalities point out a problem. This was something that former NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr, veteran driver Kevin Harvick, and young star Hailie Deegan did.

The trio of these NASCAR superstars had their say on the subject of race durations. Or to be more fair, two of these three had their say, one simply supported the idea.

That one was Dale Earnhardt Jr, as he retweeted a tweet that broke down the race duration over the decades and how the current system of stages has led to less time being spent on “raw racing.” 

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Apart from Dale Earnhardt Jr, what do Kevin Harvick and Hailie Deegan have to say?

While Dale Jr. simply endorsed a tweet, Kevin Harvick took the outer route. The Stewart Haas Racing driver put his thoughts on the table about the long duration of races.

“I think the Daytona 500, obviously, needs to be 500 miles. And the Coke 600 could be debated. But the rest of these races, they shouldn’t even allow them to have 500 mile races. They to me seem like a thing of the past,” Harvick said.

He believes a 500-mile race is “a long time.”I think with the stage racing and the things that we have going now and the attention spans of what people want to watch, I think that there should be the Coke 600, the Daytona 500, the Southern 500, the crown jewel events should have those distances,” he said.

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“I think everything else should be shorter.”

USA Today via Reuters

While young NASCAR driver, Hailie Deegan wants everyone to “think about it.” She said as a driver, one wouldn’t want to sit in the car for half the race if the length is shorter.

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“Nothing happens during most cup races till the last stage for that reason. Also if you want younger fans to take interest, you have to keep in mind there attention span is shorter,” she wrote.

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Written by:

Shaharyar Khan Chauhan

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Shaharyar is an F1 & NASCAR writer at EssentiallySports. A graduate in Journalism from Amity University, he has been a passionate follower of motorsports for a better part of the decade. A Max Verstappen and Ferrari supporter, he dreams of a pairing of the two in future.
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Edited by:

Vibhanshu Kumar