As detailed by Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 crew chief Chris Gabehart, NASCAR competition officials met with crew chiefs and key team personnel on Thursday to reach a consensus on how the Damaged Vehicle Policy would be handled the remainder of the season.
In simplest terms, if a car has flat tires and appears as if it can continue but cannot be driven back, it will be towed back to its pit stall for new tires and for the team to assess and repair damage under the allotted seven-minute time limit.
Basically, this is how the rule was enforced on Sunday at Talladega, which was not totally aligned with past precedence much to the chagrin of team leaders atop the pit boxes and NASCAR called a meeting to sort it out.
In the instance where all four tires are up but a car is not able to drive away, like Ryan Blaney at Watkins Glen, that car will be towed to the garage and will be deemed out of the race.
NASCAR expects to throughly rewrite its damaged vehicle policy in the offseason to meet the challenges of a radically different race car than the one used when the rules were written back in 2018.
Specifically, this car is beached on three rub blocks when all four tires are flat and a newly approved lift system has only generated mixed results.
There are not any rules regarding hierarchy of who gets towed first if there are multiple cars involved in a crash, like was the case on Sunday at Talladega, but those ideas are on the docket for offseason reworking too.