Kyle Petty hammers NASCAR on Busch/Harvick Penalties

Kyle Petty

SPEED analyst Kyle Petty took a minute out of this week’s Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America Tuesday to call into NASCAR Race Hub on SPEED (Monday through Thursday at 7 p.m. ET) to share his thoughts on the $25,000 fine and four-race probation NASCAR handed down to Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick earlier in the day.

On whether he is comfortable with the fine and penalty:

Petty: “I think they (NASCAR) should give Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch four weeks in the Bahamas and they should pay them $25,000. Here’s what I didn’t like about it … when Regan (Smith) won the race and they came around, those guys missed pit road for whatever reason, and they sat on the race track. FOX followed them and watched them do their circles. Then FOX watched them come down pit road.

"We had an in-car camera of Kevin Harvick trying to get the steering wheel off, trying to put the steering wheel on talking to his crew on the radio. The wide shot of the two cars. And I don’t know how much time elapsed but finally Kevin gets out of the car and goes back to say something to Kyle, and when he does, Kyle drives off, pushes his car out of the way.

“Here’s my problem with that: Where are the NASCAR officials to stop that from happening in the first place? Why wasn’t there a call made from the tower to come down? Keep Kevin in his car, keep Kyle in his car and bring it to the trailer and we’ll talk about it when this thing is over with. But NASCAR didn’t step in, they didn’t stop it from escalating, they let it escalate and they let it escalate on national TV. Now they want to fine these two guys and penalize them and put them on probation. I think NASCAR needs to take some of the blame for letting that happen. If this was the NBA or the NFL or Major League Baseball, once someone does something, the umpire or referee steps in. In our sport, the officials did not step in, so you can’t totally blame the athletes, and if going to blame them, you need to re-look at how you do stuff."