(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
What Happened?
Let’s run through each of them:
No More Hail Melon
The sanctioning body confirmed Tuesday that it will no longer permit drivers to run against the wall to gain speed, as Ross Chastain famously did last fall to steal a spot in the Championship 4 at Martinsville Speedway.
Doing so doesn’t involve an actual rule change, but employment of a pre-existing rule that can be interpreted for such an incident.
The rule, 10.5.2.6.A, states that “safety is a top priority for NASCAR and NEM. Therefore, any violations deemed to compromise the safety of an Event or otherwise pose a dangerous risk to the safety of Competitors, Officials, spectators, or others are treated with the highest degree of seriousness. Safety violations will be handled on a case-by-case basis.”
Should someone commit the infringement, the expected repercussion is reportedly a lap or time penalty.
This likely won’t be a surprise for competition. Chastain said after Martinsville that he didn’t “think it will every happen again.”
“I don’t think it will ever pay the reward that it paid off for us that it did that day,” he said. “I hope I’m around in 35 years to answer someone’s question about it. And I probably still won’t have a good answer on why it worked.”
Stage Breaks Take a Break at Road Courses
While stage racing is the norm in modern NASCAR, their format is shifting at road and street courses for 2023.
NASCAR confirmed Tuesday that it will do away with stage breaks at all six road course races on the Cup schedule. Those include Circuit of the Americas (March 26), Sonoma Raceway (June 11), the Chicago street course (July 2), Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course (Aug. 13), Watkins Glen International (Aug. 20) and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval (Oct. 8).
Xfinity Series and Craftsman Truck Series races at Circuit of the Americas and Xfinity events at Sonoma, Chicago, Indianapolis, Watkins Glen and Charlotte will also skip stage breaks.
The sole exceptions to this rule will be standalone Xfinity standalone races at Portland International Raceway (June 3) and Road America (29), along with the Truck standalone event at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course (July 8). These events will retain stage breaks due to the lack of live pit stops.
Stage points will still be awarded at the designated laps in the non-break events, but no green-and-checkered flag will be waved and no caution will be displayed. This comes after years of questioning the value of the breaks at road courses, where they can hamper strategy.
“When we introduced stage racing … we took an element of strategy away from the event,” NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer told NBC Sports and other reporters at the NASCAR R&D Center. “Felt this (change) would bring some new storylines (in an event).”
Lessened Tire Penalties
The dreaded loose wheel penalty that led to suspensions for many crew chiefs and crew members in 2022 will be altered slightly for 2023.
Should a vehicle lose a wheel on-track, it will be penalized two laps and have two pit crew members suspended for two races. But the crew chief will critically not be suspended, while crew members – many of which work in multiple tours – will only be suspended for the series they suffer an infraction in.
A wheel lost on pit road under caution will result in the guilty driver being sent to the tail of the field. If the wheel is lost on pit road under green-flag conditions, the offending party will have to perform a pass-through penalty.
The Art of Racing In the… Damp
NASCAR isn’t racing in major rain on ovals, but the sanctioning body is opening up an opportunity to compete in damp conditions on the schedule’s flatter tracks.
Series officials confirmed Tuesday that NASCAR will have a wet weather package available for races at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Lucas Oil Raceway Park, Martinsville Speedway, the Milwaukee Mile, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, North Wilkesboro Speedway, Phoenix Raceway and Richmond Raceway.
Wet weather tires will be available for these events and windshield wipers will be utilized. Teams are to prepare for the potential of wet conditions at these tracks just as they do with road and street circuits.
“Our goal here is to get back to racing as soon as possible,” Sawyer said of the move. “… If there’s an opportunity for us to get some cars or trucks on the racetrack and speed up that (track-drying) process and we can get back to racing, that’s what our goal is.”
To reiterate, this doesn’t mean racing in actual rainy conditions.
“We don’t want to be racing in full-blown rain (at those tracks) and we’ve got spray like we would on a road course,” Sawyer said.
More Time On the Clock
The Damaged Vehicle Policy (DVP) isn’t going away in 2023, but it is adding a small bit of additional time for teams to operate.
After testing a 10-minute allotment for teams during the playoffs, NASCAR has settled on an increase from six to seven minutes on the DVP. This is the time in which teams can make repairs on pit road after suffering an accident. If they surpass the time on pit road without managing to make minimum speed, their machine is eliminated from the race.
Teams will not be permitted to have specialized repair tools in the pits. They’ll be eligible to replace toe links on pit road, but not control arms.
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance…
Remember when Corey LaJoie was battling for the lead on the final lap of the summer Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway?
At the time it was solely for the glory of a win. But in 2023 it could also include playoff repercussions.
NASCAR has elected to remove the point position requirements for winning full-time drivers to be playoff eligible in its top three tours. Previously a driver would have to be in the top 30 in points in Cup (LaJoie was a distant 31st) or top 20 in Xfinity or Trucks. Now they’ll need only to be a full-time competitor to have a chance to crack the postseason field with a victory.
More Options
Restarts will see a pair of changes at different venues throughout the schedule.
First off, NASCAR is testing an expanded restart zone at its facilities. This is being done to give the leader more time and options to take off on restarts – giving a small increase in an advantage to the driver leading the field to green.
The change will be evaluated after the March trip to Atlanta to see if it’s worth keeping full-time.
NASCAR is also bringing the choose rule to superspeedway and dirt events in 2023. This could be key to both track types, allowing drafting partners to get together easier at superspeedways and providing an option for drivers to avoid potentially messier restart lanes on dirt.
Analysis
Each of these changes is a likely improvement in their respective areas, but collectively this is a massive quality of life change that should benefit the series and its competitors throughout the year.
By removing the option for another wall-riding effort, NASCAR is avoiding any potential liability risk it would clearly face when a desperate driver tested a track’s limits in search of a season-altering win.
Chastain pulled off the move perfectly and should be celebrated. It’s right and fair that he wasn’t penalized last fall. But it’s important for the sanctity of the racing that drivers don’t constantly throw their cars into the wall in search of extra positions.
Had NASCAR not made this decision, it would be been almost expected for someone to replicate Chastain’s move at Martinsville this spring. If you’re in contention to win, you owe it to your sponsors, team and fans as a driver to do everything possible to win.
Some competitors might not find the move justifiable ethically or safety-wise, but it stands to reason that someone would have considered it at Martinsville and potentially elsewhere. This was a Pandora’s Box situation – you can’t unlearn that the opportunity is there once you know, so it was a safe call to take the option away altogether before gave themselves of concussion or decimated their car on a crosswalk gate in search of an extra second on-track.
The only question is how this will be enforced if someone is chasing the win at Darlington and gets a bit too overzealous in the high lane. You’d assume a call like this to be common sense, but it doesn’t take much for something to slip into a grey area.
Wall-riding being gone is significant, but perhaps no decision was more season-altering than the decision to get rid of stages at road courses.
I may come off as an old purist here, shouting ‘back in my day’ tropes to anyone that’ll listen. But there was something special about the strategy that used to be generated in the annual trips to Sonoma and Watkins Glen. Drivers would dive to pit road on two and three-stop strategies, playing a game of risk that could be altered in a moment by an untimely caution. It made those events unique and fun, with comers and goers as we all collectively waited for the varying strategies to shake out.
That had been lost in the stage racing era. Races essentially played out like this: Someone led the way until they were coming to two to go in the stage, when pit road would be closed, and then they’d pit. Everyone else who wanted even a snowball’s chance at victory would follow them, while others essentially punting on the day would stay out to collect stage points and, if they were lucky, a playoff point for the stage win.
Stages took much of the intrigue out of road course races. The same drivers stand up front throughout the day, so long as they could avoid mistakes. And the ones that won stages were often afterthoughts in the race itself, getting unjust rewards that weren’t reflective of their actual performances.
The other changes are small, but understandable for differing reasons.
Teams have called for additional repair time on the DVP and have spoken out against the stiff penalties for wheel issues. Removing the points eligibility issue for playoff contention can help reaffirm the ‘win and you’re in’ philosophy, particularly in an era that has defined by parity thus far. It also removes the need for injured drivers with waivers to claw into the top 20/30 if they win regular season races in their respective series.
The wet weather option on ovals will be met with mixed responses, but gives more flexibility to help the sport fit into its TV windows. Expanded restart zones give the leader a greater advantage at a time when their edge on second place is arguably smaller than ever.
Not having the choose rule at superspeedways led to weird shuffling on restarts as drivers searched for their drafting partners, and it makes sense to give a lane choice option at dirt tracks where one lane could be greatly favored over the other as the track wears and rubbers in.
The general theme of these changes is the sanctioning body listening to feedback and making tweaks to improve the product for its partners and participants. Could some unintended consequences arise from them? Of course. But taken as a whole, Tuesday’s news seems like a net positive heading into a promising 2023 season.
