NASCAR warned most of the field about maintaining minimum speed when many drivers were conserving fuel during the first stage of Sunday’s Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway.
During the latest episode of the “Hauler Talk” podcast, NASCAR vice president of racing communications Mike Forde said “75% of the field at one point” was under minimum speed, which NASCAR relayed to all the teams through its Microsoft Teams chat system.
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“We can IM individual teams or the entirety of pit road,” Forde said. “And so we IM’d all of pit road and said, ‘Hey, there are X amount of cars that have not reached minimum speed. If you guys don’t pick it up, then we’re going to have to step in.’ And soon after, they picked it up. So that message was delivered, and that’s why we did not black flag anybody.”
Minimum speed is determined according to the race track. At Talladega, the minimum speed is within 12.5% of the pole position.
Forde said NASCAR decides when to issue a black flag for falling below minimum speed, but drivers usually get a lap or two to increase their pace.
NASCAR can also adjust the minimum speed during a race if tire wear is much greater than anticipated.
“It depends on a number of different factors,” Forde said. “At Darlington [Raceway], we’ll give teams the benefit of the doubt a little bit more because of tire wear. Over the course of a tire run, speeds go much, much lower, and we don’t want to park cars because of the tire wear. So we’ll give them a much larger cushion.”
Forde said minimum speed is largely officiated in conjunction with the Damaged Vehicle Policy that ensures cars remain in raceable condition after a wreck.
“We’re not looking to put cars out of the race,” Forde said. “There are sponsors paying good money to be part of our sport. And there are fans that come to the race and want to see – even if their driver’s not in contention and might not win – they’d like to see them at least on the race track. So we’re not in the business of putting cars out. We’re going to keep them out there on the race track for the fans.”
Other topics covered by Forde and senior director of racing communications Amanda Ellis during the 75th episode of “Hauler Talk,” which explores competition issues in NASCAR:
– The safety crew response times for the Talladega crash involving Joey Logano and Riley Herbst.
– How NASCAR ruled that Kyle Larson stayed above the yellow line and whether penalties were considered for other drivers.
– The review of SMT data on the final lap.
Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA Today Co. and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is a contributor to the “Hauler Talk” show on the NASCAR Podcast Network. He has also covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.