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Fire on Fridays: NASCAR Officiating Needs a Revamp

It’s a common theme for folks to complain about the officiating in any sport, but what happened last weekend at Talladega Superspeedway in the NASCAR Cup Series was the straw that broke the camel’s back when it comes to NASCAR officiating.

It’s one thing to argue balls and strikes and other judgment calls of the sorts, but it’s another entirely to point out when a sanctioning body is essentially making up rules in the moment. That’s exactly what happened at Talladega.

Following the 28-car pileup, the biggest crash in NASCAR history, the over-detailed rulebook was thrown out like Josh Berry at Kansas Speedway, and instead things turned into the Wild West.

I bring up Berry because one week earlier he crashed on lap 1. The car could’ve continued, but the team didn’t even have a chance to repair it because Berry had four flat tires and couldn’t get rolling again. According to NASCAR’s rulebook, if you have four flat tires but no damage, it’ll take you back to pit road to change the tires and continue. But if you have damage and can’t move (even if the reason you can’t move is because of the flat tires and not said damage), it must tow you to the garage and your race is over.

You may not like that rule, but you have to respect that NASCAR officials followed it to a tee. The same can be said of when Ryan Blaney was parked at Watkins Glen International.

Fast forward to Talladega, and that rule had apparently completely changed. Chase Elliott, Chase Briscoe and Harrison Burton were all involved in that final wreck but received tows back to pit road so the teams could make repairs, change tires and get the Nos. 9, 14 and 21 back on track (Burton’s car could not continue).

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Had NASCAR announced during the week leading up to Talladega that the rule was changing, there would be zero issues with what happened. But this rule instead seemed to change in the moment.

“All I know is all those cars parked in turn 3 better not get towed to pit road, buddy,” Berry said. “Because that would be breaking the Damaged Vehicle Policy. … If you got four flat tires, you gotta get towed to pit road, you’re done, right?”

It reminded me of playing games as a kid when I’d start winning and then all of a sudden my friend changed the rules midgame to set me back. If someone does that to you too many times, you don’t ever want to play anything with them. The same applies to NASCAR: Why should fans tune in or pay money to go to races if the rules are going to change midrace?

Elliott and Briscoe finished 29th and 30th, with only John Hunter Nemechek still running behind them. But if both drivers were ruled out where they wrecked, it’s possible Austin Cindric and Joey Logano (who were both knocked out by that crash) as well as others could’ve been scored ahead of them in the final results. Cindric was leading when the incident happened, after all.

Whining about a two-point discrepancy may sound over the top, but there have been countless instances where a cut line in the Cup playoffs was decided by one or two points. Elliott is currently 13 points over the line. Logano is 13 below it, Cindric is 29 below and Briscoe 32.

Say Elliott beats Logano for the final Round of 8 spot by three points. The aftermath of this wreck could’ve altered the championship battle.

There’s already a section of the fanbase that believes NASCAR favors Elliott and his team, Hendrick Motorsports. NASCAR doesn’t need to make decisions that will help create more tinfoil hats.

Additionally, race winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr. received damage when Cindric’s car slammed into his left side, and the No. 47 was missing door foam as a result. Based on the rulebook, a car can’t continue racing without that door foam. But NASCAR’s VP of Competition Elton Sawyer said afterward that officials missed that.

The guy was leading the race. How do you miss that? Stenhouse should’ve been called to pit road. Nick Sanchez was forced to do that in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race two days before to fix his spoiler that had apparently already been cleared.

So that means Brad Keselowski, who finished second, should’ve won, right? Not so fast.

The cars of Keselowski and his RFK Racing teammate Chris Buescher were allegedly missing roof nails. Kevin Harvick was disqualified from this same race one year ago for something similar, so why were the RFK cars not DQed?

So I guess third-place William Byron should’ve won? Granted, had the No. 47 been told to pit, that whole final restart plays out differently.

Surely that’s all the bad officiating that took place in one race, right? Nope, there’s more.

A wreck of that size is going to bring the red flag out. The problem here was when the red was switched back to the yellow flag, the pace car stayed put for several minutes.

What that means is that those on track had to remain parked but those who made it to pit road before the red or who got towed there got to begin working on their car. Several cars had the opportunity to make repairs without the fear of being lapped.

I don’t know of a time that has ever happened before, and it gave an unfair advantage to a handful of drivers.

From what I’ve heard (NBC absolutely ignored this dilemma on the broadcast), Alex Bowman and Tyler Reddick were the big benefactors of this officiating mistake. Bowman drives a Hendrick car too, right? Hmm. Again, you’re not helping yourself, NASCAR.

Bowman finished 16th and Reddick 20th. Had both been lapped while making repairs, the best either could’ve finished is 21st. They could’ve finished as bad as 26th had they been one lap down.

Bowman is currently 26 points above the Round of 8 cut line and Reddick is 14 points above. Again, if either advances by just a handful of points, this moment could be the difference.

Any one of the bad officiating moments above on its own would be bad enough. But the fact that all of them happened in the closing laps of one race — a playoff race, at that — makes it completely unacceptable. Had everyone in the NASCAR tower spent too much time on Talladega Boulevard the night before?

I don’t like to call for people’s jobs, but this is a billion-dollar corporation, yet the officiating is worse than a church league softball game. How Jim France, Steve Phelps and company are putting up with this level of incompetence beats me.

My theory is that so much of the officiating job has become automated now (pit road penalties, scoring, etc.) that when officials have to make actual judgment calls using human eyes, ears and brains, they completely freeze.

See also
Drivers, Teams Leave Laundry List of Complaints About Car & Procedures After Talladega

There are three options for how the officiating crisis could be solved. NASCAR, pick one:

  1. Hire more people so nothing gets missed
  2. Have the current people step it up or get replaced
  3. Simplify the rulebook

Half of these issues wouldn’t exist if NASCAR simplified the rulebook. It’s harder to screw up officiating if there aren’t as many rules to start with.

For starters, get rid of the DVP, for the love of all that is sacred. It was a stupid rule from the moment it was announced, but I never dreamed NASCAR could make it this controversial and stupid.

Besides, a car that is hurriedly repaired in seven or 10 minutes in a pit stall is a bigger safety risk than one that is repaired in the garage.

NASCAR functioned just fine for nearly 70 years without the DVP. Sure, a damaged car would occasionally lose debris or leak fluid. But it never caused as much uproar and favoritism as has happened in the DVP era.

The DVP itself has damage and four flat tires. It should be parked. But it won’t be — because of hubris, probably.

I just hope that Talladega was the climax of NASCAR officiating blunders and that measures will be taken to improve it.

Hopefully, what we saw wasn’t just the opening act with the main officiating fiasco scheduled for the championship race at Phoenix Raceway.

Content Director

Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020. Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.


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SB

Tow every car back to pit road under red flag. Let the teams decide if they can be repaired or not. They can always be pushed/towed back to the garage.

DoninAjax

Reddick drives for Reverend Joe and MJ.

RCFX1

There’s a lot that happened.
• Towing the 9 and 14 (two chase drivers) before the others.
Waving the yellow but not allowing the cars to move, giving the 9/14 more time to work on their cars.
They were brought back in a different order than when the caution was brought out so their car positions were changed (the transponders are the official placements).
The roof rails on the 17 and 6 were missing (required for the race)
The foam in the 47 door was exposed and was required to be covered with metal.

Marshall

I’m not so sure simplifying the rulebook will solve many problems. I definitely agree with getting rid of the Damaged Vehicle Policy. The rest of the rulebook is complicated for a reason though; teams are clever at finding loopholes. If you re-write the rulebook to make it simpler you’ll take out things NASCAR needs to officiate, but then teams will start cheating more leading to NASCAR having to put all those rules they took out back in. I’m sure it sucks for newer or underfunded teams trying to get ahead to have to follow such a strict rulebook, but it’s important to keep as level a playing field as possible for the big teams, or the smaller teams will have even less of a chance.

Echo

Nascar was cheating by bringing the 9 and 14 car back and holding cars under yellow. Nascar did everything it could to keep Elliott and Reddick in the race. So the elusive rulebook always is explained away by Nascar officials after the race. Keep the rulebook, it allows Nascar to cheat. Speaking of Nascar cheating. I’ve changed my mind, no way Hamlin or Reddick win the championship. Nascar has Denny already penciled in, but I think that’s changed now.

Kevin

Because NASCAR is going to continue to do whatever it needs in order to make believe their “second season” format looks like a great idea.

CCColorado

They do need rules, but let’s not go overboard, please.
I agree the DVP is a joke and needs to go away, another unintended consequence of the Nex Gen car, but self imposed my NA$CAR.
The Dega deal was embarrassing to say the least and makes one wonder about future events. Pretty much stuck with the officials they have now, lord help us.
And now they STUPID Roval. UGH! What a mess. Watching practice on the butchered up infield shows how far NA$CAR will stoop to put on a “show” not a real race.
Let’s see what this weekend brings……

Kevin

You kind of, sort of, missed the the bottom line.
A more apt headline and article would be “Fire On Fridays: NASCAR needs A Revamp”

Last edited 4 months ago by Kevin