NASCAR met with Cup Series crew chiefs and key team personnel on Thursday to clarify how the intersection of the Damaged Vehicle Policy and Flat Tire Recovery Program will work moving forward after an inconsistent application over the weekend at Talladega.
The meeting was detailed by Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 crew chief Chris Gabehart during his weekly SiriusXM NASCAR Radio call as soon as he jumped off that call.
“NASCAR called to try to clean up some of what happened in an admittedly unprecedented situation at Talladega this past weekend and how it exposed some vulnerabilities in the current DVP process. Now, I am a proponent of vulnerability or not, in the moment, the rule is the rule and in black and white.
“It’s stated that if you’re deemed in an incident and you can’t drive back to your pit box, you’re out of the race. It doesn’t matter how good or bad that rule is, just like it was at Kansas with Josh Berry, that was the rule and everybody can stomach it and understand it.
“What is confusing is when that doesn’t happen, no matter if it’s a 40-car wreck, which it was close to that then we can’t finish the race. And boy, that’s an unintended consequence, get it. But from a competitive standpoint, I prefer sticking to the rules.”
Now, based on how Gabehart explained it, what happened at Talladega when NASCAR towed Chase Elliott, Chase Briscoe and Harrison Burton back to pit road with damaged cars and flat tires, and allowed them to make repairs and continue, that is now the new standard the rest of the year.
“If the kind of call is on the fence, if the cars can’t move but we’re not sure how bad the damage is, they want to put it back in the teams’ hands and give them an opportunity to go out and compete again. So, I don’t want to speak entirely for them on the specifics. I’m sure they’ll do that in the coming days but the gist of it is that it sounds like they are going to loosen the reins up a little bit with five to go.”
Just with five to go?
That would be one way to try to remain intellectually consistent with removing the Berry and Blaney cars out of the race on the first lap at Kansas and Watkins Glen if nothing else.
Gabehart expressed confidence in how NASCAR will police this but with an asterisk.
“Do I think there are instances that could arise that honestly is not fair by the nature of how it’s going to have to be officiated? Yes,” he said. “It’s tough, you know, if you’ve got two cars beached with similar damage and they’re fighting each other for the last spot in the playoffs, which car do you tow back to the pit box first in the instance there are not enough wreckers?
“It’s a very tough spot for NASCAR to be in so I don’t love it any more than I did seven days ago if l’m going to be honest. And I don’t love it any more than I did Sunday after the race.
“Having said that, it’s not an enviable position. This is a little bit of a difficult problem with this Gen-7 car because it can be virtually fine but not able to move. That’s just not the way our prior history was. So trying to figure out how to fairly navigate that is going to be a work in progress, unfortunately.”
