Update: Keselowski lays out counterargument for hypothetical appeals case
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In addition to the mismanagement of the damaged vehicle policy and when the pace car rolled upon the lifting of the red flag, NASCAR also seemingly had a big miss in post-race technical inspection on Sunday at Talladega.
At some point during the race, the roof rails on both the RFK Racing cars driven by Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher fell off. Keselowski finished second but was not disqualified for not having the newly mandated safety component on the car.
That drew the ire of several crew chiefs after the race, including one who anonymously told Sportsnaut that it was ‘ridiculous’ and ‘they should be embarrassed.’
They, being NASCAR inspectors because most recently Kevin Harvick was disqualified after the fall Talladega race last year for windshield fasteners coming loose, a similar safety issue.
NASCAR’s Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer says ‘the bolts (securing the roof rails) were tight’ and that and investigation has been opened into how they came off.
“Not a lot to report on that because I don’t have a lot of information on that at the moment,” Sawyer said on Tuesday during his weekly SiriusXM NASCAR Radio segment.
“It was a brand new part so we want to take a deeper dive into that. What I can tell you is the bolts were tight, that hold the rails down, some kind of malfunction there. I don’t have a great answer for you.”
The problem that creates is crew chiefs are now going to be encouraged to engineer their own malfunctions if that doesn’t result in any penalties.
Kaulig Racing president Chris Rice said it was a matter of integrity in his own SiriusXM interview.
“Yeah, I mean, you know, we put those roof rails on and we don’t have a clue what they do but I can tell you that you have to keep your parts and pieces on the race car,” Rice said. “I think we have to look at that pretty hard.
“I don’t know what happened to them. I was not involved in it, didn’t even know it happened until I think I was watching something on Twitter the other night and Denny Hamlin said it hallened. I didn’t even know they fell off whatever happened to them.
“But when those things happen, we have to react right? Because now, I’m sure my guys are sitting at the shop right now trying to figure out how to make theirs fall off at the next race. That’s just the way my guys work — if there’s a speed limit, you work to find your way around it.”
Rice said there needs to be meetings and clarification on why that wasn’t penalized.
‘Should there be a ruling on it,” Rice asked. “I don’t know. I’m not, thank goodness, the one making the rules. But one of the pieces we just added to the cars this week came off a car, and like, we need to address that.”