“All I know is that all those cars in Turn 3 better not get towed to pit road, buddy, because that would be breaking the Damaged Vehicle Policy.”
Whatever clarity NASCAR provided Josh Berry, and the entire industry over the past week, was completely muddied up by one of the largest crashes in NASCAR history on Sunday afternoon at Talladega Superspeedway.
It was officially a 23-car crash and candidly, NASCAR had no idea how to determine the order of which cars received assistance, to what degree they received assistance regarding their lift system for flat tires, and how to regulate damaged cars that needed a tow.
Berry was so incensed because he was eliminated from contention last week at Kansas when all his Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 had was four flat tires but no lift system so the driver could get his car back to pit road.
NASCAR ordered the No. 4 to the infield and all Berry could do was watch the aftermath of The Big One at Talladega incredulously as the sanctioning body towed cars to pit road, not eliminated, and all sorts of theatrics going on around what was best articulated as a race car graveyard.
“The 42 car (John Hunter Nemechek) was over there doing burnouts, slinging rubber all over the safety workers, trying to get going. If you have four flat tires and you got to get towed to pit road, you’re done, right?”
That is certainly what happened to Berry last week at Kansas and last month to Ryan Blaney at Watkins Glen. It was not what happened to Chase Elliott and Chase Briscoe, who needed to be towed to pit road, and was allowed to have their car repaired, and they continued on into overtime.
Elliott was able to pass cars that were able to continue is the final car above the playoff cutline before an elimination race at the Roval, plus-13.
“A lot of confusion on the backstretch on what to do and how to do it,” Briscoe said. “It’s pretty frustrating to say the least. It was weird. Everyone back there had the air jacks and we still can’t move. Ours, they pumped the air jack and it still didn’t move and then five minutes later, randomly, it just popped up five minutes after they tried it.
“I’m sure they are going to have to figure that out a little better. Even other guys that had it, they couldn’t move either. Yeah, I don’t quite know what to make of that. It was a lot of confusion for sure. The officials were doing the best they can but I’m inside the car and my team is saying one thing and the official is saying another but I’m sure everyone is doing the best job they can do.”
Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, said the number of cars involved in the crash just made for a series of complicated decisions. He also made the second concession in a week, after Cup Series managing director Brad Moran made the same, that they didn’t like eliminating Berry from Kansas, even though the rule was applied properly.
“First and foremost, our goal is never to put good cars out of the race,” he said, referring to cars that could continue. “When we developed the (Damaged Vehicle Policy) … that’s never been the goal.
“Based on our experiences last week at Kansas (with Berry) … we felt like, yeah, we probably could have made a different call there. We had a good car that probably just needed tires last week.
“As we went into this week, we wanted to err on the side of the competitor. Again, we don’t want to put good cars out of the race. We had a situation in Turn 3 where we’ve got 25-plus cars down there. We’re not sure why they can’t continue. We don’t know if it’s strictly because they’re in the grass (or) they’re high-sided. So, for us to make a determination that they’ve got some suspension damage and can’t continue, that puts a lot on us.
“Once we got (Briscoe) and (Elliott) back to pit road, they made their small repairs that they can make on pit road and went out and met minimum speed. So, we felt like we made the right call there.”
Chris Gabehart, crew chief of the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11, said he wants more clarity.
“Like everyone, I’m just a little confused on how the rule book reads versus how it was applied last week versus this week,” Gabehart said. “I don’t envy what NASCAR has to do from the tower in these moments. Frankly, and this is just my honest opinion, the rule book has gotten so big that it’s so hard to enforce every bit of it by the letter of the law in those moments.
“I’m guessing somewhere in the literature there is a ‘at the series director’s discretion’ clause that probably makes everything that happened alright but certainly, this week versus last week was not the same protocol.”
Race winning crew chief Mike Kelley didn’t have any championship stakes involved in this race, but recognized as an outside observer why this was an issue.
“We’ve got to get that cleaned up as a sport, right, because there are teams, and I need to be careful how I say this,” Kelley said. “There are teams with a lot on the line that are sitting out there just waiting on wreckers to get to them.”
That wasn’t the only issue race control needed to answer questions over as there was also the matter of when NASCAR changed the red flag to a yellow flag, but the pace car didn’t move, as repairs began on pit road.
It was at face value a breach of protocol.
“I don’t think I’ve seen them turn the yellow flag on and allow guys to work on cars while other guys are just sitting there,” Kelley said. “I’m sure they’ll think about that, talk about that because if you’re a guy who is sixth in the championship hunt and you’re sitting there waiting on somebody to get to you, but the other guys are working — or maybe I’m looking at it wrong and the clock evens it all out, but I was getting confused when Ricky kept coming by saying, There’s still four cars sitting here.
“I’m sure they were put in a tough situation with that many cars involved in that wreck and this many wreckers. Some of the guys — the cars look to be damaged or in the grass. They couldn’t use the airlift system. Some guys are running it; some guys are not.
“It’s a tough situation, and we’ll learn from it and get better at it. But, yeah, it was a lot of new things kind of happening, but it didn’t impact ours. We were worried if they just ran a bunch of laps under caution, that would. That would have made me upset.”
A Joe Gibbs Racing crew member certainly was too.
Sawyer offered an explanation for that too.
“We had all intentions to roll the caution vehicle as soon as we pulled the red and displayed the yellow,” Sawyer said. “The race director noticed some things that were still going on in Turn 3 where he couldn’t do that.
“… We had safety equipment that was still moving around there. So just for the safety of all, held the caution vehicle for a little longer. … We had some cars on pit road that got the opportunity to do a little bit more work before those other cars could get there.”
Sawyer also said ‘every circumstance is different’ and that NASCAR is ‘going to do our absolute best to make the best calls with the best information we have in front of us.’
Richard Boswell, crew chief for Briscoe, benefited from it this time but said it’s still a work in progress.
“There is some work to be done, but I don’t expect it to be any different,” Bowswell said. “It’s a new system. It’s an effort to make everything better for everybody with the NextGen car when we have such low ride heights and when you have flats, you ended up on rub blocks.
“We gained four or five spots because we were able to get back to pit road. From that standpoint, I’m happy about it.”
But his peers are largely not.
So, ultimately, what is the policy moving forward? Because last week, cars damaged by a crash were not eligible for the flat tire recovery tow but this week, they were.
“When you look at a situation like we had today, we want to err on the side of the competitor,” Sawyer said. “Our goal with the DVP from Day One was never to put good cars out of the race. If we need to make a decision that’s in the best interest of our fans and competitors, that’s what we’ll do.
“We’ll look at it in the off-season and see if we need to make a change.”