NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer Steve O’Donnell addressed the penalty levied against Martin Truex Jr. on pit road in Saturday night’s Sprint Cup Series race at Kentucky.
After a caution on Lap 195, Truex Jr. was ruled to have passed a car while entering pit road and forced to line up at the tail end of the first line (22nd) for a restart on Lap 200.
“It is clear in the rulebook that you can’t pass to the left. It’s also brought up in every drivers’ meeting,” O’Donnell said. “Has there been some, drivers pulling off just as they pull into their pits that kind of pull up alongside a car, sure that’s happened.
“I’d probably relate this to other sports. If you look at the three-second rule (in the NBA), you know it’s always there; it’s probably rarely called because you don’t see it blatantly. Then you’ll see a coach or some teams say, ‘Hey you got to focus on this rule because it’s getting out of hand.’ That was the case certainly for us, we saw a trend that’s getting bigger and bigger.”
Although Truex worked his way back up for a 10th-place finish, he had one of the dominant cars in Saturday’s race and was visibly upset on pit road afterward.
“Everybody does it,” Truex said after the race. “I’ve had people pass me the same way at Bristol and Martinsville. They’ll drive right by you through the pit. Everybody does it, so I don’t know why all of a sudden they’re making an example out of me.”
O’Donnell said the rule would be reiterated to the industry before this weekend at New Hampshire and clarified if needed.
O’Donnell also discussed the quality of the racing at Kentucky, which had undergone a repave and revamped the banking in two of its corners. He said there was plenty of passing and multiple leaders at Kentucky, which was a big accomplishment for a race on a new surface. And he said NASCAR and Goodyear would look into driver feedback about tires feeling too hard.
O’Donnell also left the door open for the lower-downforce package that was used at Kentucky to be seen again during the regular season.
“There’s a slight chance, but I doubt it. We’ve got some meetings here to really sit down with the teams and talk about the direction we collectively want to go in,” O’Donnell said. “There’s been some talk of Michigan going back, but at this point our plan has always been, you know, the first Michigan, Kentucky, regroup, and really dial things in for ’17 and get the teams focused on the remainder of this season and getting ready for the Chase.”