NASCAR Changes Rules, Increases Penalties And Suspensions
Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports
NASCAR has tweaked their penalties when it comes to wheels and ballast falling off of cars and trucks.
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On Wednesday NASCAR announced that they were increasing the penalties for teams when their vehicles have wheels or ballast fall off. NASCAR cited safety as the major reason for changing the rule and increasing the punishment for those who violate it.
The new penalties mandate that any such violation of the rule will result in the following:
Wheel falling off due to improper installation
- Mandatory minimum four-race suspension for crew chief
- Mandatory minimum four-race suspension for tire changer
- Mandatory minimum four-race suspension for tire carrier
Ballast falling off of vehicle
- Mandatory minimum four-race suspension for crew chief
- Mandatory minimum four-race suspension for car chief
- Mandatory minimum four-race suspension for the head engineer
In the 2015 season there have been three instances in which this has happened. The first of which happened in the Sprint Cup Series at Indy. The No. 98 machine of Premium Motorsports was penalized by NASCAR after it had weight fall off of it. The result was NASCAR suspending the No. 98 crew chief and car chief for a race whilst fining the crew chief $25,000, both are on probation until the end of the year. The owner of the No. 98 team (Mike Curb) was also docked 15 ownership points.
NASCAR has had two issues with this sort of thing in the Xfinity Series this season.
In May both Ross Chastain (Iowa) and Peyton Sellers (Dover) lost weights from their cars during practice. In the case of Chastain, the weight actually struck another driver but luckily there wasn’t any injury caused. In both scenarios some combination of fines, one-race suspensions and probation were handed out as penalties.
According to a release from NASCAR, the increase in penalties is in an effort to improve the safety of the sport. NASCAR feels as though certain infractions pose a bigger safety risk and as a result the penalties for those infractions should be greater.
"NASCAR has categorized certain serious safety infractions that create a significant risk of injury or damage (e.g. separation of ballast weight or wheel(s) from the vehicle) under the P3 category. NASCAR considers such infractions to be very serious in nature and has therefore included pre-determined minimum Penalties to address the severity of such violations. NASCAR further reserves the right to escalate such safety related Penalties to higher Penalty levels when the infraction is considered to be more egregious in nature or displays a higher degree of negligent behavior."
Some might view this latest change in the rules as simply another one to add to the list of changes that NASCAR has made in recent years. However, NASCAR should be commended in this instance as this is truly a safety issue. NASCAR will never be able to completely stop teams from pushing the envelope but maker stiffer penalties like this certainly helps.