Kevin Harvick hoping Kyle Larson takes a lesson from “out of character” Nashville incident

Kevin Harvick recently shared his thoughts on the Kyle Larson vs. Denny Hamlin incident from Nashville. Speaking on the Happy Hour podcast, the former #4 driver claimed that given how the result turned out for him, Larson would learn a lesson from it.

During a late-race restart, Larson, while racing to get the lead with Ross Chastain and Denny Hamlin in front of him, tried to push the #11 out of the way, which collected Chastain and brought on another caution.

It's worth mentioning that Larson was told on his radio by his spotter at New Hampshire that Hamlin races him the way he does because Larson lets him.

At Nashville, the 2021 Cup champion attempting to move Hamlin out of the way was pretty clear to Harvick.

"He was trying to do something out of character, hit the apron and wound up wrecking the #1. That took the #1 out of the race, wrecked a few other cars, but that was really... instead of Kyle doing what Kyle does, he was kind of falling into the pressure of doing something out of character, and that was move Denny Hamlin or turn him sideways and push him out of the way instead of just pass him and do the things that he normally does to try to win the race," Harvick described. [0:28]

The former Stewart Haas Racing driver claimed that because of this incident, Larson would take a lesson from it.

“That’s the part that I think you learn along the way, and I think Kyle Larson will take a lesson from this and say, ‘You know what, I don’t need to listen to the guys around me in some of these situations,’ because the crew guys, they’ll put this unneeded pressure on you to do stuff like that and the fans will put this unneeded pressure on you to force you into doing something that’s out of character," Harvick added. [1:30]

Kevin Harvick believes Kyle Larson could've won at Nashville had he been more like himself

Further elaborating on his thoughts on Kyle Larson and the Nashville incident, Kevin Harvick stated that when a driver is in a position to win a race, he shouldn't be thinking about settling a score.

"I still believe that Kyle Larson could have won that race if he would have raced like Kyle Larson. I think he was trying to force the issue on something that was not how he would have done it typically," Harvick said. [26:10]

Harvick described how Chastain didn't have a racecar as fast as Denny Hamlin's, and he had done "a great job" of holding off Hamlin for a long time. Harvick believed that had Larson let the battle between Chastain and Hamlin play out for some more time, he could've driven around the two and taken the lead.

The NASCAR veteran added that what Larson did was highly out-of-character for him, and something that came from listening to the people around him.

Harvick claimed that he could've taken care of that without forcing the issue, and the decision to do so ended up compromising his race result.