Kevin Harvick blasted Stephen A. Smith for saying NASCAR drivers are not athletes, taking the debate to the Speed podcast and arguing that anyone who does not understand racing should stay out of the argument. Harvick said Smith was chasing clicks and speaking on a sport he knows nothing about.
“If you don’t know anything about racing, just keep your opinion to yourself because you shouldn’t even have an opinion if you don’t know anything about a sport,” Harvick said. He added that Smith was “looking for clicks on something he knows absolutely nothing about what he’s talking about.”
The dispute started after Smith said NASCAR drivers “don’t count” in the athlete category while responding to a fan who called Richard Petty one of the greatest athletes. Smith argued that driving a car is not the same as other sports, saying, “You’re driving a car! I’m being honest, it’s a great sport. But come on, bro. Getting behind the wheel of a car is not the same. You can be behind the wheel of a car in your 60s and 70s, for crying out loud. A golfer is not an athlete. A NASCAR driver is not an athlete,”
Harvick tried to answer that argument with numbers. He said he had Polar make him a smartwatch to wear during races, and the first race showed over 3,000 calories burned. Harvick said the company called him back because it thought something was wrong, so he wore a replacement watch, which showed close to 2,500 calories burned. He said those kinds of caloric burn levels or heart-rate changes are only seen in marathon runners.
The numbers are central to the broader fight over what counts as athletic effort. A NASCAR driver can burn anywhere from 2,500 to 5,000 calories during a race, while NBA players can burn 900 to 1,000 calories in around 20 minutes and 1,200 to 1,500 calories when they play 30-plus minutes. That comparison has helped fuel a debate that has now pulled in multiple drivers.
Denny Hamlin said a normal person’s body is not trained to do what NASCAR drivers do. “The strength and the stamina is the part that no casual person would be able to do. If you’re going to use that part of the definition, we are absolutely athletes, and he’s incorrect,” Hamlin said.
Ryan Preece also weighed in, saying, “I’d love for him to go tumbling 13 times, have black eyes, and show up next week doing what you got to do,” a reference to the kind of punishment drivers can take and still return to race. Harvick later pushed back again on Smith’s relevance jab, saying, “Do I look like somebody that needs to be relevant? I am relevant. I have a show that airs nationwide every weekday for two hours on radio after I have a national number one morning show on television or two hours every day for the last 14 years. What are you talking about? This is the problem. Can we grow up? Can we grow up?”
The back-and-forth has turned into a public referendum on NASCAR’s physical demands, with drivers using calorie counts, endurance and crash recovery to argue their case. Smith has already made clear where he stands. The drivers are responding with the one thing they think settles it: what their bodies go through when the green flag drops.
