FORT WORTH, Texas -- Kevin Harvick's job isn't to promote races, but he feels if NASCAR wants buzz, it has to rotate its championship event.
The 2019 NASCAR Cup Series schedule was released Tuesday, and the order of the 36 points events are exactly the same.
"I'm just speaking as a guy who's winging it. I'm not running two publicly traded companies that have investors and making the decisions, but I like change," Harvick said about the two main track operators of NASCAR tracks.
"I like a rotation of the last 10 races. I like the rotation of the championship race. I like moving the all-star race around to different cities ... to have these cities participate in what they're doing for these big events."
Harvick said if the season could end in mid-October instead of mid-November, it would open up more options to host the final race. NASCAR has conducted its finale, which typically is the weekend before Thanksgiving, at Homestead-Miami Speedway since 2002.
The track has a long-running sponsorship with Ford to sponsor all the championship races of the three national series.
"If you put six or eight race tracks in the championship race mix and mix that up every year and you mix those other nine [playoff] races up with different race tracks every year, every year you're going to have a built-in conversation," Harvick said.
"That's the part that we're missing, the conversation piece to really change things up. ... It's not fair to have [the championship] in one market."
Harvick said he likes the changes that are starting this year, with Indianapolis as the final race of the regular season, and then Las Vegas, Richmond and the Charlotte road course making up the first round of the playoffs instead of Chicagoland (now in July), New Hampshire (race moved to Las Vegas) and Dover (now the opening race of the second round).
The final six races of 2018 are the same as 2017. Harvick said tracks such as Texas should have a shot at having the championship race.
"You have a championship race here, and you bring people that haven't been here before, they're going to come to the next one when it's on its regular date," Harvick said. "We have to build this enthusiasm in every race market.
"When you take that championship race and that all-star race and have the playoff races in virtually the same spot every year, you don't build that intrigue and enthusiasm that you would build if you move it around."