- Harvick slammed “road-relevant” regs, urging a return to high-horsepower engines.
- FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem’s hint at a potential V8 return for F1 by 2031.
- NASCAR’s Steve O’Donnell revealed the sport remains committed to V8 power.
If Quentin Tarantino ever made a “Once Upon a Time in Formula One,” the climax would probably feature Ayrton Senna storming an OEM boardroom with a flamethrower, given the sport’s present-day hybridization predicament.
Speaking of which, FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem recently offered a glimmer of hope to fans longing for Formula 1’s screaming multi-cylinder engines and pre-hybrid chaos. While the Emirati executive hinted at a potential return to V8 power by 2031, the ripple effects of those comments quickly reached the world of stock car racing as well.
Former driver and 2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick effectively sounded the bugle, calling for racing to return to its raw roots and for series officials to stop prioritizing OEM appeasement over fan experience in an unhinged, candid take.
Kevin Harvick thinks racing has lost its edge
Harvick didn’t dance around the issue when speaking his mind to Will Buxton on “Speed with Harvick and Buxton.” As discussions shifted toward manufacturers and hybrid-era politics, the 50-year-old delivered the kind of blunt assessment longtime racing fans have been echoing for years.
Buxton started the groundwork, mentioning the massive disparity in racing overall. He pointed out that the Indy cars run have lower power-to-weight ratios than their 1960s counterparts – a painful anecdote of how low regulations and green credentials have put racing to.
While the North American giant is gearing up to roll out its new hardware (2.4L V6-hybrid layout) in 2028, Harvick’s co-host insisted he wants to see the old, high-revving 15,000-rpm machine V10, V12 screamers back.
Then came Harvick’s brutal rant. Tipping his hat off to MBS and his V8 vision for F1, the veteran began, “There is an open road here, and everything that the FIA president said is exactly what’s wrong with racing around the world. We’re fighting it right now in NASCAR. You knock all the horsepower out of it. You try to make it so that it fits in your Honda Civic, uh, so that they can build the V6 or four cylinder. Nobody cares about that!”
If manufacturers want road-relevant development, Harvick argued they already have outlets for that across sports car racing, IndyCar, NASCAR, and Formula 1. Reflecting on old Alex Zanardi footage from WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, the former Cup champion pointed to the screaming engines, shredded tires, and thick layers of rubber laid across the circuit as proof that real racing was built on “horsepower.”
To Harvick, modern motorsport’s obsession with reducing “horsepower” in the name of efficiency and cost-cutting has only pushed racing further away from what fans actually want.
He argued that every attempt to make race cars more economical eventually drives costs even higher, while tighter rulebooks make extracting even a single extra unit of “horsepower” far more difficult than in a freer, more open formula.
“Screw the manufacturers and all the things that they want to do to have it apply to their street cars,” Harvick lambasted. “The fans want to see things that are out of control go fast and loud.”
That line probably resonated with a large portion of stock car fans who still romanticize the raw brutality of older NASCAR eras, high-horsepower cars sliding around intermediate tracks with drivers hanging on the wheel rather than managing aero turbulence.
At the heart of his frustration is the belief that racing series have slowly engineered the chaos out of their products. More restrictions, less horsepower, quieter engines, tighter rulebooks, all in pursuit of efficiency and cost control. But according to Harvick and the thousands of disgruntled fans, the result has stripped away part of what made motorsport feel larger than life in the first place.
F1’s V8 discussion and NASCAR, V8’s last bastion of hope
The timing of Harvick’s comments is what made them hit harder. F1, a series that has spent the last decade fully embracing hybrid technology, suddenly appears to be reconsidering its long-term direction.
During the discussion, Buxton openly praised Ben Sulayem’s willingness to push back against manufacturer influence, even suggesting motorsport is currently going through an identity crisis. One where the industry is finally realizing that technological relevance alone doesn’t necessarily create emotional connection.
That’s where the V8 conversation becomes bigger than just engine noise. For many fans, loud high-displacement engines represent unpredictability and character that the hybrid setups fail to induce. Cars were pure race machines offering no succor, fastening drivers to the brutality of high g-force and mind-bending speeds.
Drivers wrestled them rather than operate them as precision machines locked inside microscopic operating windows. In short, it wasn’t always cleaner or smarter, but it felt alive.
On the stock car racing side of things, NASCAR’s President Steve O’Donnell has moved to clear the air surrounding NASCAR’s rumored shift toward electric vehicles, a conversation that has lingered since the sanctioning body unveiled its first EV prototype in 2023.
The concept car, designed to showcase what a greener future stock car could look like, was met with heavy skepticism from fans almost immediately.
The debate reignited after NASCAR executive John Probst floated the idea of using a CUV-styled EV body for the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, suggesting it could help give the division its own identity. The backlash was swift, forcing NASCAR officials to clarify that Probst was referring only to body styling and not to an all-electric racing series.
Speaking recently on Kenny Wallace’s show, O’Donnell revealed that one OEM had aggressively pushed NASCAR toward hybrid and eventually full-electric technology before later reversing course entirely.
“Five years ago, one of our OEMs said, ‘If you are not hybrid within the next two years, we are out of NASCAR,’” O’Donnell explained. “Within a year, they said, ‘If you are not electric, we are out of NASCAR.’”
According to O’Donnell, NASCAR responded by developing an EV prototype simply to prove the sport was capable of adapting if necessary. Ironically, the same group that pushed for electrification later dismissed the idea itself.
“When we presented the potential for an electric series, they said, ‘That seems really dumb. That’s not NASCAR. That’s not entertaining,’” O’Donnell added. “We said we agree.”
For now, NASCAR’s R&D department will continue exploring emerging technology, but a full transition away from traditional combustion engines appears nowhere close. And judging by fan reaction, that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
For many longtime supporters, the roar of a V8 is inseparable from NASCAR’s identity. From the sound of the engines to the feel of raw “horsepower,” the sensory experience remains central to the sport’s appeal. Silent race cars, no matter how advanced, simply do not carry the same emotional weight for much of the fanbase.
