A rule change, effective immediately, brings the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and O’Reilly Auto Parts Series more symmetrical to what takes place in the Cup Series, specifically regarding cars involved in an incident and on the damaged vehicle policy.
Starting last year, NASCAR changed its DVP for the Cup Series allowing cars involved in a crash to complete repairs behind the wall and return to the track for a chance to make minimum speed. That was not the case in the second and third-tier divisions until this weekend.
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Those new rules for Trucks and O’Reilly are the same as the Cup Series.
If the vehicle cannot continue due to flat tires, an obstruction on the track or mechanical issues, NASCAR will provide a tow or tow strap in order to get that car back into competition If the vehicle is towed from the track or pit road, it will be taken to the garage for repairs The pit road repair time limit is seven minutes and eight minutes at Atlanta
If the vehicle exceeds the seven-minute time limit while in the process of exiting pit road, the vehicle must serve a flag status penalty before reaching minimum speed If the vehicle remains in its pit box at the expiration of the seven seven-minute time limit, a flag status or lap penalty may be assessed, and the vehicle must go to the garage to complete repairs Once the vehicle returns to the track from the garage, it will have one attempt of three consecutive laps to meet minimum speed and may not return to the garage before attempting minimum speed
Prior to this rule, NASCAR’s policy was that any car that did not meet minimum speed after the DVP clock expired would be sent to the garage and out of the race and any car sent to the garage due to an incident was deemed out of this race.
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As NASCAR’s Amanda Ellis explained on Wednesday’s Hauler Talk podcast, a return to a points based format and the Chase for the Championship format makes the opportunity for teams to make repairs and return to the track even more important.
“With points being how they are now, we’ll often hear teams say ‘every point counts’ and this helps them with that,” said Ellis. “I think there has been continued conversations from the start of the season and this felt like a good time to start that change.”
Trucks penalty adjustment
Additionally in the Truck Series, NASCAR is moving away from the policy of taking away practice time from teams for consecutive weeks of inspection failures.
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The policy before had the following loss of practice time penalties:
Two consecutive weeks of a failed inspection, loss of 10 minutes Three consecutive weeks of a failed inspection, loss of 20 minutes Four consecutive weeks of a failed inspection, loss of the entire session
If two weeks of inspection failure, a team now is sent to the rear of the pre-practice inspected line.
Effectively, NASCAR recognized that the teams that were frequently getting hit with this penalty were lowered budged teams with drivers that needed the track time more than others, leading to drivers with no track time racing.
The rear of the inspection line still carries weight as the turnaround time to practice is quite substantial.
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