In a continued trend from Sunday night, crew chiefs interviewed on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio throughout the week were not impressed with what appeared to be race control ignoring both the rule book and established precedence regarding the Damaged Vehicle Policy.
Chase Elliott, Chase Briscoe and Harrison Burton were all involved in the massive melee at Talladega and were not able to drive back to pit road because they had four flat tires, meaning they should have been out of the race.
After all, that has been the policy for the past month when both Ryan Blaney and Josh Berry were eliminated from the race with what appeared to be only minor damage. Berry featured virtually no damage and absolutely could have continued the race at Kansas but race control ordered his car towed to the camp ground when the driver refused to get out of the car.
Sit struck every astute observer as wrong when Elliott and Briscoe especially were allowed to continue after being towed to pit road, because it seemed as if the rules had been changed to favor a pair of championship eligible teams.
Adam Stevens, who serves as crew chief for Christopher Bell and the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 team, had the strongest words.
“I don’t have any clue what the rule is going forward,” Stevens said. “That was all blown up this weekend. I can tell you what the rule has been. The rule has been, if you are involved in an incident and you can’t drive it back, you are out of the race.
“I have been a victim of that a dozen times throughout my career. In recent years, that has been the rule. We saw it with (Blaney) at Watkins Glen and (Berry) at (Kansas) and us at Michigan. You can pick a car every week that is a victim of that. This weekend, that wasn’t the case and there was nothing communicated to me, my team, or anyone within the walls of Joe Gibbs Racing that it was going to change.
“That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t sit right with me that it just changed on the fly that something seemed to change.”
Chris Rice, presdient of Kaulig Racing in his own SiriusXM interview, said ‘my thoughts are we need to do it the same way every week.’
“In my shop, I say do it the same way every week, even if it’s right or wrong,” Rice said. “Then change the rule later. I wasn’t too keen on how that happened. I watched a bunch of cars get drug to pit road. AJ (Allmendinger) was stuck behind a bunch of cars, and that was another thing, the way it was done … I need to watch it back and figure it out.
“I recognize that it was 28 cars involved and there was a lot for the tower to figure out.”
Randall Burnett, crew chief of Kyle Busch at Richard Childress Racing, echoed sympathy that there were so many cars involved.
“You had a quarter of the field involved,” Burnett said. “I don’t know how many cars total but that’s a hard spot for NASCAR too to prioritize how that goes and make sure you don’t give someone an opportunity you didn’t give others; but you don’t want to be towing 20 cars back to pit road just to have a mess on pit road.
“I’m glad I’m not NASCAR in this circumstance in how to police all that and make it right for everybody. Some cars you look at and you think there’s no damage and a lower control arm is broke and you can’t see that but the body looks okay. Then you have cars where the whole nose is torn off but the suspension is fine and the car rolls fine.
“So it’s hard to determine who needs to be towed to the garage, or pit road, and it’s a little bit of a sticky situation.”
Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition held court with the media after the race, but also appeared on SiriusXM NASCAR and said the spirit of the rule was applied because the league doesn’t want to sideline capable cars.
“Our goal from day one was not to put good cars or trucks out of the race, and the way we’ve executed that over the past three years; the policy hasn’t changed,” Sawyer said. “There have been times that we have towed vehicles to pit road to correct their issue.
“There is a small list of things you can change there. Toe links is one of them. The cars we towed back were able to make those modification and made it back on track and met minimum speed, so yeah.”
The Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 and Penske No. 12 teams, of course, did not receive that same opportunity and that is the point of contention.
Does Stevens have a solution for NASCAR?
“I don’t care what the process is,” he said. “I just want it to be consistent for all the races the entirety of the year. If you think back to how these points were scored and who is in the playoffs, we all operated under the same set of rules and procedures so for those rules and procedures to have changed, it has implications on what could happen in the future.
“The inconsistency is the problem. If we’re going to tow cars back and have a look at them, that’s fine, but that needs to be communicated to the teams. It needs to be in writing and we all need to know how that is going to operate.
“If the rule is, you are out of the race if you can’t drive it back, that’s okay too but we need to have some discussions as a group and communicate to the teams what the rules actually are.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.