When over half the field crashed near the end of last Sunday's Talladega's 500-mile race, several cars were left stranded despite sustaining minimal damage. Stationary burnouts and arguments with track workers ensued as drivers were desperate to remain in the race. For the multiple playoff drivers involved, there was an added sense of urgency. Chase Briscoe was actually told to put his hand over the latch if track workers tried to lower the window net. Talking immediately after the race, Joey Logano, frustrated after his day ended when he was collected in the wreck, shared that it was a disaster.
“Everyone is just sitting on flat tires. They want to roll, but they can't because they're on flat tires. We got this machine that's going to jack up the back of the car but if you're flat on the fronts, you still can't steer.”
In their respective podcasts, Kevin Harvick described it as a 's***show' while Denny Hamlin went as far as to call it a 'sham.'
So, what’s going on here? There’s a few overlapping components at work here. First, there's NASCAR’s damaged vehicle policy, or DVP. It was originally introduced to prevent cars from going back onto the track when they honestly shouldn’t be there, in hopes to keep cars that are off-pace from re-entering. Teams are then allotted a limited amount of time to make repairs in the pits. After racing against the clock, their damaged car must go and meet minimum speed on-track, or the car can no longer race. If a driver is involved in a wreck and goes straight to the garage, their race is over as well. Gone are the days of drivers lapping the track 200 laps down and with half a car.
MASSIVE CRASH at @TALLADEGA. 😱
— Motorsport.com (@Motorsport) October 6, 2024
Red flag 🚩 as there is a junkyard in Turn 3 💥 #NASCARPlayoffs #NASCAR
🎥 @NASCAR pic.twitter.com/C3hV5NaQg6
Flat tires = race over?
Where things get murky is when the problem of flat tires rears its rubber head. The current generation of Cup cars do not have inner liners (essentially a tire within a tire), which is a major departure from its predecessors. It’s now quite common to see a car spin and then become stranded despite suffering no damage at all. This has been an issue since the car’s introduction at the beginning of the 2022 season.
NASCAR has tried to be accommodating and is willing to give cars a push so they can get back rolling and make it into the pits. But often, that's not enough and the cars remain stuck. So here's the conundrum: When cars cannot continue on their own after being involved in a wreck, their race is supposed to be over. But what if the only reason they can't move is because of flat tires? Mostly clean cars that can still compete are being pulled out of races, simply due to flat tires.
Looking at a recent example, Josh Berry spun in a multi-car wreck on the first lap at Kansas and was unable to roll on his own. The car looked okay, but the tires were flat. Despite protests from the driver and crew chief Rodney Childers, the mostly undamaged No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford was towed behind the wall — ending his race.
And there are so many other moments where drivers, teams, and even NASCAR seemed unsure of what to do. During practice for the Cup race at Iowa, the entire session was halted for an extended period of time due to Ross Chastain's simple spin. Fearing damage to the car, especially to the very sensitive diffuser area, Chastain did not attempt to drive it back. NASCAR ended up lifting the car fully into the air with two trucks and then placed it on a dolly to be wheeled back. All that for a single-car spin with flat tires. And obviously, that’s just not feasible during a race.
HAVE YOU EVER in the NASCAR Cup Series?!
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) June 14, 2024
Two two trucks worked together to put Ross Chastain's car on a dolly to avoid further damage to the No. 1 car. pic.twitter.com/LZ9usXzu5F
That brings us to the air jack lifter system. This past summer, NASCAR started allowing teams to install this system in the rear of their cars so that when an incident occurs, safety workers can just plug in an air compressor and get the car off the ground. But as Logano pointed out, it didn’t seem to help much at Talladega.
A mid-race change in rule enforcement
After the red flag was waved at Talladega, NASCAR went against recent precedent and towed damaged cars back to the pits, giving teams the chance to work on them. The sudden change raised eyebrows and caused frustration throughout the paddock, as every point matters in the midst of the 2024 playoff fight.
NASCAR tried to clear the air post-race with VP of competition Elton Sawyer explaining that the sanctioning body chose to handle things differently following the Berry incident at Kansas.
“On the heels of last week at Kansas, you know our goal was never to put good cars out of the race,” said Sawyer. “Last week, as we got looking at that, digesting it, we could tell that maybe we should have made a different call last week. So as we went into Talladega, we wanted to make sure that we erred on the side of the competitors. We didn’t anticipate seeing 25+ cars down there … That's why we made the decision to tow the two to pit road that we did. The No. 9 [Chase Elliott] and No. 14 [Chase Briscoe] – both of those cars met minimum speed so we felt like that was the right call to make.”
Sawyer went on to say that NASCAR officials “will take a much deeper dive into this in the off-season.”
There’s just one problem with all of that. According to Hamlin on his weekly podcast, Actions Detrimental, NASCAR never informed the drivers or teams that they were changing how the rule would be enforced at Talladega.
Around the 33-minute mark, he declared: “They didn’t notify any of the teams of that,” later adding: “You made a rule, stick to the rule … You can’t change it now because other people’s seasons have been decided by this rule in one way, shape or form. You can’t change it in the middle of your playoffs. You can’t change your mindset in the middle of the playoffs.”
But that's exactly what they did. Fair or not, it was a significant change in how others were treated in past weeks and that's obviously problematic. NASCAR now appears willing to tow cars back to the pits when this situation arises, but who makes the call on if that should happen or not? When is there too much damage? Will playoff cars be treated differently? Will the race be halted while the cars are being towed? It's all very confusing and something that is nowhere near being solved.
