The potential use of the “cone rule” at short tracks like Bristol Motor Speedway is something NASCAR executives have discussed, Senior Vice President of Competition Scott Miller said Monday during an appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
The discussion was prevalent following some gamesmanship in Saturday night’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Drivers preferred to restart in the outside lane, so some — like Denny Hamlin, who fessed up to it on Twitter — checked up coming off pit road to try and ensure a specific restart spot on the outside lane.
“As we do here at NASCAR, we’re constantly looking at ways to make the races and the action for the fans more interesting. That is a topic that we have discussed a little bit,” Miller said on The Morning Drive. “… But we talk about a lot of things and when the final decision comes, I’m not sure what that will be, but certainly it has been a topic of discussion.”
The cone rule is popular in short-track racing. A cone is placed on the race track under caution and drivers have the option to choose which lane they want to restart in, driving to either the inside of the cone or the outside. This lends itself to different strategy plays as a driver deeper in the field could restart in the first few rows should he or see choose the lane opposite competitors.
NASCAR is aware of what happened on pit road in Bristol and Miller said the sanctioning body will look into it.
“That’s something we don’t want because we don’t need accidents at the end of the pit road with people checking up,” Miller said. “We’ll figure out how we’re going to address that one and try to move on. Really it kind of only comes into play at a few places. We know when it’s possibly going to happen, so we’ll try to address that.”
“Ironically, it didn’t quite work out,” Miller added.
👈🏻guilty. And it worked exactly 0x https://t.co/GmrQ2409QB
– Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) August 21, 2017