Kevin Harvick didn’t just respond to Stephen A. Smith — he completely undercut the argument.
After Smith’s now-viral claim that NASCAR drivers “aren’t athletes,” the reaction across the sport was immediate. Drivers pushed back. Fans piled on. Kurt Busch even issued a direct, personal challenge.
But Harvick took a different route.
Instead of firing off a one-liner, the former Cup Series champion leaned on something far harder to argue with — real-world data.
And it told a very different story.
Kevin Harvick Breaks Down the Physical Reality of NASCAR
Speaking on SPEED on FOX, Harvick addressed Smith’s comments head-on, making it clear he believes the criticism comes from a lack of understanding about what drivers actually endure inside the car.
“Here’s the deal with Stephen A. Smith: this guy has no clue about racing,” Harvick said. “And I don’t mind people criticizing our sport or our drivers or our people, but 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.”
Then he backed it up.
Harvick shared that during his career, he worked with Polar — a company known for fitness tracking technology — to measure what his body was going through during a race.
The results caught everyone off guard.
“I did the first event, and I think I burned 3,200 calories,” Harvick said. “It’s a 500-mile race, so you’re in the car for a long time, hot day, (we) didn’t have a lot of cautions that day.”
That number alone puts NASCAR drivers in the same physical conversation as endurance athletes.
And even the data analysts didn’t believe it at first.
“They called me the next week, and they said, ‘Hey, we’re going to send you another watch, there’s something wrong with that watch. We think we got a bad reading, so you’re just a race driver, there’s no way you’re expending that much energy.’”
There wasn’t.
The Numbers Tell a Story Smith Can’t Ignore
When Harvick repeated the test at the next race, the results were slightly lower — but still staggering.
He burned roughly 2,400 calories.
“The only thing that we see with that much of a calorie burn or constant heart rate are marathon runners,” Harvick said he was told.
That’s the part that often gets missed.
From the outside, NASCAR can look like “just driving.” But inside the cockpit, drivers are dealing with extreme heat, sustained G-forces through corners, constant micro-adjustments at nearly 200 mph, and hours of uninterrupted focus.
There’s no halftime. No substitutions. No margin for error.
And the physical toll adds up quickly.
Drivers routinely lose several pounds in a single race due to dehydration, while maintaining elevated heart rates for hours at a time. The combination of physical strain and mental demand is exactly why drivers train year-round — even if it doesn’t fit the traditional image of athletic competition.
A Debate That Keeps Missing the Point
Smith’s comments tapped into a long-running debate around motorsports — one that often centers more on perception than reality.
Because from a distance, it’s easy to focus on the car.
But from inside the sport, the focus is always on the driver.
Harvick didn’t try to redefine the word “athlete.” He didn’t need to.
He simply laid out what the job actually requires — and let the numbers speak for themselves.
Kurt Busch challenged Smith to experience it firsthand.
Others called the take disrespectful.
Harvick just showed the reality.
And once you see it laid out like that, it becomes a lot harder to argue that NASCAR drivers “don’t count.”
Kevin Harvick Destroys Stephen A. Smith’s NASCAR Take With One Brutal Reality Check