When greater than half the sphere crashed late within the 500-mile race at Talladega, several cars were stranded despite the fact that they sustained minimal damage. There were stationary burnouts and arguments with track employees as drivers were eager to stay within the race. For lots of the drivers within the playoffs, there was an added sense of urgency. Chase Briscoe was told to place his hand on the latch if track employees tried to lower the window screen. In an interview immediately after the race, Joey Logano, frustrated at the top of the day and being taken to the wreck, said it was a disaster.
“Everyone is just sitting on flat tires. They want to roll, but they can't because their tires are flat. We have a machine that will raise the back of the car, but if you rest the front of the car you still can't steer.”
On his podcasts, Kevin Harvick described it as a “s*** show,” while Denny Hamlin went so far as to call it “fiction.”
So, what's occurring here? There are several overlapping elements at work here. First, there’s NASCAR's damaged vehicle policy, or DVP. It was originally introduced to forestall cars from returning to the track once they weren't actually purported to be there, within the hope that cars that had lost pace wouldn’t have the option to re-enter the track. Teams then have a limited period of time to make repairs to the pits. After a race against the clock, their damaged automobile must hit the track and reach a minimum speed, otherwise the automobile will now not have the option to race. If a driver has an accident and goes straight to the garage, his race can even end. Gone are the times of drivers taking 200 laps down the track with half a automobile.
Flat tires = end of the race?
Things get messy when the issue of flat tires becomes apparent. The current generation of Cup cars haven’t any inner liners (essentially a tire inside a tire), which is a serious departure from its predecessors. Nowadays, it is sort of common for a automobile to spin after which grow to be stranded, despite the fact that it has not suffered any damage. This problem has been present because the automobile's launch initially of the 2022 season.
NASCAR has tried to be accommodating and is willing to offer the cars a lift to get back on target and into the pits. But often this shouldn’t be enough and cars remain stuck. Here's a conundrum: If cars can't proceed on their very own after a crash, their race should end. But what if the one reason they will't move is because their tires are flat? Mainly clean cars that may still compete are withdrawn from races just because of flat tires.
To have a look at a recent example, Josh Berry spun in a multi-car accident on the primary lap at Kansas and was unable to roll under his own power. The automobile looked good, however the tires were flat. Despite protests from driver and crew chief Rodney Childers, the largely undamaged No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford was towed behind the wall, ending its race.
There are loads of other moments where drivers, teams and even NASCAR aren't sure what to do. During practice for the Cup race in Iowa, the whole session was stopped for an prolonged time frame as a result of an easy spin by Ross Chastain. Fearing damage to the automobile, especially the highly sensitive diffuser area, Chastain didn’t try to reverse it. NASCAR eventually lifted the automobile into the air with two trucks after which placed it on a dolly so it could possibly be transported back. All this in a single automobile with flat tires. Of course, this shouldn’t be possible during a race.
This brings us to the air lift system. Last summer, NASCAR began allowing teams to put in the system at the back of their cars in order that within the event of an accident, safety officials could simply plug in an air compressor and lift the automobile off the bottom. However, as Logano noted, it didn't help much at Talladega.
Change in enforcement mid-race
After the red flag was raised at Talladega, NASCAR defied recent precedent and towed the damaged cars back to the pits, giving teams a likelihood to work on them. The sudden change caused surprise and frustration within the paddock as every point counts within the 2024 play-off battle.
NASCAR tried to clear the air after the race, with competition vice chairman Elton Sawyer explaining that the sanctioning body decided to do things in another way after the Berry incident in Kansas.
“You know after last week in Kansas that our goal was never to put good cars out of the race,” Sawyer said. “Last week, after we checked out it and digested it, we got here to the conclusion that perhaps we should always have made a distinct decision last week. So after we went to Talladega, we desired to make sure that we made a mistake on the competitors' side. We didn't expect to see over 25 cars there… So we made the choice to tow these two cars to pit road, which we did. Number 9 [Chase Elliott] and No. 14 [Chase Briscoe] – each cars reached the minimum speed, so we felt it was the proper decision.
Sawyer went on to say that NASCAR officials “will look into this much more deeply in the offseason.”
There is simply one problem with all this. According to Hamlin on his weekly podcast: Harmful activitiesNASCAR never informed drivers or teams that it was changing the best way it enforces rules at Talladega.
John Hunter Nemechek, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB, Toyota Camry transmission wrench
Photo: John Harrelson / NKP / Motorsport Images
At concerning the thirty third minute he declared, “They didn't tell any team about it,” he later added, “You made the rule, persist with the rule… You can't change it now because other people's seasons have modified, it's been defined by that rule in a certain way, in shape or form. You can't change that through the playoffs. You can't change your mindset in the course of the playoffs.
But that's exactly what they did. Fair or not, this has been a big change in the best way now we have treated others in recent weeks, and it is clearly problematic. Currently, it seems that NASCAR is willing to tow cars back to the pits when the situation arises, but who decides whether that happens or not? When is the damage too great? Will playoff cars be treated in another way? Will the race be interrupted while the cars are towed? This is all very confusing and unattainable to unravel.
