NASCAR has made a slight adjustment to its rules for pitting in another team’s pit box but it’s more of a clarification than anything else.
Bell drove away from his pit stall during a lap 108 pit stop but crew chief Adam Stevens quickly realized they had a loose wheel. The veteran crew chief immediately told Bell to find a teammate pit stall and have them service the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 car.
The reason this decision was made was that a loose wheel coming unhinged while on the track would have resulted in suspensions to the tire changer and jackman over the next two weeks.
Stevens said after the race that such a scenario had been previously discussed and that he knew it would only be a penalty for pitting outside of their pit box.
“It’s something we’ve talked about before,” Stevens told reporters after the race. “It’s something that has come up in the past and it’s been discussed with NASCAR. It could prevent a wheel coming across the track or a more dangerous situation. As soon as we realized what happened, we jumped on it.”
NASCAR’s rules bulletin makes clear that a driver can only stop in another team’s pit stall to ‘correct a safety issue’ and will receive either a penalty for starting at the tail end of the field if under caution or a pass-through penalty if occurring under green flag.
In other words, this is still the equivalent of pitting outside of the box and NASCAR says safety issues include the following distinctions:
- Tighten loose wheel nuts or lug nuts
- Remove a fuel can
- Remove a wedge wrench
- Remove the jack from under the vehicle
NASCAR also stated to teams that receiving service in another pit stall for competition adjustments may result in being penalized a lap or more. Again, this is to purely to allow teams the opportunity to correct a safety matter so something worse doesn’t happen at speed while on the race track.
