Kevin Harvick cuts some slack to Denny Hamlin's replacement in Mexico: "Tough task"

Kevin Harvick recently gave his opinion on the performance of Denny Hamlin's replacement driver in Mexico. Ahead of the race in Mexico City, it was announced that Hamlin won't be getting behind the wheel of the #11 car due to personal reasons involving his wife giving birth.

In his place, JGR picked Ryan Truex to drive the #11 car in Mexico. It's worth mentioning that Ryan Truex is the younger brother of former JGR driver Martin Truex Jr. But unlike his brother, Ryan hasn't been able to solidify himself in the Cup Series.

Between 2013 and 2025, Ryan Truex has made only a handful of appearances at NASCAR's highest level. His best finish came at Pocono in 2014 in the form of a 20th place result. In fact, before Mexico, the last time Ryan Truex raced in a Cup car was in 2019, at Daytona. Since then, not only had a lot of time passed but the sport has also moved forward with the Next Gen car.

At Mexico, Truex ended up with a 23rd place finish. Speaking about his result, Kevin Harvick said:

"Tough task to ask of Ryan to jump in that car. To be able to go out there and expect him to get anything out of that car is something that I don't know that many people could actually do. New track new in the car does a lot of sim work for that group but being on the racetrack weird conditions with rain in and out. But just getting used to the car itself when the tires get wore out and everything that happens throughout the race with these Next Gen cars is very different. So I think that was a tall task," Kevin Harvick described. [14:20]

With that said, Harvick shifted his attention to the 'unique situation' with Denny Hamlin missing the race. The former SHR driver claimed that while he wasn't aware of the details of the delivery of Hamlin's son, he speculated the situation to be 'pretty extreme' for the JGR driver to have missed the race.

But Kevin Harvick added that without knowing the details, it'd be tough for him to comment on this subject more.

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Kevin Harvick urges Carson Hocevar to have more common sense

In Mexico, Carson Hocevar and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. had their second on-track coming together in a span of three races. This led to Stenhouse being visibly and vocally frustrated with the Spire driver after the race.

So far in his relatively young career in NASCAR, Hocevar has developed a reputation for being one of the most aggressive drivers on track. His incident with Stenhouse served as just another reminder of the Spire driver's style and approach to racing his peers even when he's a lap down.

Speaking about this on his podcast, Kevin Harvick warned Hocevar for creating 'a pretty one-way street' with his repeated on-track incidents.

"He has to have some common sense about the scenarios that he's dealing with because it's going to be a day when he's leading the race and he's coming to lap Stenhouse and Stenhouse is going to wipe his ass out. And that's how these things work especially when you get to the point of having two or three of them," Harvick said. [16:30]

He mentioned that Hocevar has got the speed but lacks the common sense to deal with on-track scenarios.