NASCAR has rescinded the disqualification it issued to Ryan Blaney and the Team Penske No. 12 on Sunday night at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
As a result, Blaney once again will be scored as the sixth-place finisher of the South Point 400 while also having all the playoff points he earned restored as well. The ultimate outcome places Blaney back within 17 points of the elimination cutoff, a far improvement from the 56 back he found himself at after the disqualification.
In a statement, NASCAR says the reversal came down to a measuring error of the left front shock.
“After further review of the inspection process throughout this weekend’s events at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, NASCAR has rescinded the No. 12 disqualification penalty,” NASCAR said in a statement after rescinding Ryan Blaney’s disqualification. “Monday morning during its race weekend debrief, NASCAR discovered an issue with the damper template used for inspection. NASCAR then conducted a detailed investigation and has restored the No. 12’s stage and race finishing positions from Sunday. NASCAR has taken internal steps to remedy this issue moving forward.”
Team Penske also issued a statement of appreciation to NASCAR.
“We are pleased with the decision by NASCAR to rescind the post-race disqualification to the No. 12 car following Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. NASCAR has shown a tremendous amount of integrity throughout the process which has led to this conclusion. We are proud of the effort and the results by the No. 12 team during the 2023 season. We look forward to continuing the pursuit of the NASCAR Cup Series Championship.”
Brad Moran, the managing director of the NASCAR Cup Series, said Monday afternoon on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that there were inconsistencies discovered in the way the sanctioning body measures shocks.
“I guess 12 hours later or a little more, we got a little bit of information,” Moran said on SiriusXM. “We brought all the shocks back. We brought the damper template back and we brought all the tools back. We started going through all of our weekend reports, doing our due diligence to make sure that there was nothing missed.
“Unfortunately, something came up. One thing led to another and as we did all of our due diligence and dug into all the details … we realized that the damper plate at some point was not consistent throughout the entire weekend, which is obviously on us.”
Moran said NASCAR needs to ultimately be better than this and that new procedures would be implemented to avoid a repeat issue.
“We’ll own what we have to do. The teams step up during the playoffs. We need to do the same.”