NASCAR drivers are, undoubtedly, athletes. Pay no mind to Stephen A. Smith’s pleas otherwise.
“If you don’t know anything about racing, just keep your opinion to yourself,” FOX Sports’ Kevin Harvick said on the latest episode of “SPEED with Harvick and Buxton” in response to recent viral comments made by the popular sports media personality.
Smith said that “getting behind the wheel of a car” is not the same, and does not compare as an athletic feat to 41-year-old NBA superstar LeBron James still competing at a high level, per se.
“Come on, man,” Smith said about NASCAR drivers. “That don’t count. You’re driving a car.
“A NASCAR driver is not an athlete.”
In Harvick’s eyes, Smith’s opinion couldn’t be further from reality. His experiences backed that up.
When Harvick was a driver, he experimented with Polar watches, tracking how many calories he burned throughout a race. The first time, he burned 3,200 calories over the span of a race, and Polar thought there “must be a mistake.” So they tested it again and Harvick burned 2,400 calories in a race, he said, that was full of breaks for caution flags.
In fact, the only other competition that compares to these numbers are marathon runners, Harvick noted on “SPEED.”
“Any elite driver, they are an elite athlete,” Will Buxton said. “Motor racing is not sitting on your ass and pushing a pedal and driving a steering wheel… It is the most extreme of extreme sports.”
So if Stephen A. Smith is indeed listening, Harvick and Buxton aren’t holding back.
“I think this is just something where Stephen A. Smith is looking for clicks on something he knows nothing about,” Harvick said.
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