Did Federated Auto Parts 400 race winner Matt Kenseth jump the final restart with 18 laps to go on Saturday? Some drivers thought so, but he was not penalized at Richmond International Raceway.
Appearing on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s “The Morning Drive” on Monday morning, Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer, explained the governing body’s process on making the call and likened it to ball and strike calls in baseball games.
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“I think for now we are still content,” O’Donnell said. “It is as you said a ball and strike call. We’ve got the ability to go back and look at video, which we do, and in this case made the call and moved on from it. It’s still one that we want to leave in the drivers’ hands. If we have to get involved and make those calls with more video, I think we’ll do that but we’d still like to see it play out the way it does.
“I think it’s one of those things that when there is some question on a call or ball, strike, same thing. Certain umpires you see different strike zones and fans seem to tune into that and the media talks about it, which is fair. I think it’s one of those areas that any advantage a team can try and get on restart, they are going to try do that and put a call in our hands, but that’s our job to make the call during the race.”
Restarts have been increasingly under the microscope in recent weeks with drivers asking plenty of questions about them during the pre-race drivers’ meeting at Bristol Motor Speedway last month.
O’Donnell also discussed how NASCAR would follow up on Saturday night’s incident in which Michael McDowell inadvertently ran into the safety truck under a caution.
“First, we start with conversations with the driver, spotter and the crew chief immediately following the race,” O’Donnell said. “What happened, where was the breakdown in communication and see what we can learn from there. Obviously, we got all the video to go through and then for every race that we have, Monday and Tuesday we go through each of the calls for a race. Evaluate what happened, what were the circumstances.
“We’ve got training that goes into this prior to the race where we meet with all the track safety and cleanup workers. We do that every morning as well when they’re at the track. We’ll debrief with those folks as well and see what they saw and look to not have that happen in the future.”
• O’Donnell also commented on reports that track officials at Richmond asked to move its spring race date from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon. This year rain moved the April race, the Toyota Owners 400 , from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon.
“We have had those discussions,” O’Donnell said. “Certainly, you see that with a lot of tracks. Phoenix wanted to differentiate kind of the Saturday, Sunday. Richmond has looked to do that in the past. We had some challenges to be able to pull it off but all the discussions so far lead us to think that we are going to be able to do that in 2016. Still a couple things to iron out, but all indicators look like that might be a strong possibility for us.”