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Christopher Bell crew chief Adam Stevens blasts NASCAR over confusion with damaged vehicle policy

ProfilePhotoby: Nick Geddes10/08/24NickGeddesNews
NASCAR
Jasen Vinlove-Imagn Images

If you were to ask those in the NASCAR garage what the damaged vehicle policy is going forward, you’d probably get an array of different answers.

NASCAR left it up to interpretation after this past Sunday’s Round of 12 race at Talladega, in which their was mass chaos and confusion over the DVP. Adam Stevens, crew chief for the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team and Christopher Bell, said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Tuesday that he’s not sure what the rule is moving forward.

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“I don’t have any clue what the rule is going forward,” Stevens said. “That was all blown up this weekend.”

After the “Big One” with five laps remaining in the race, in which a record 28 cars were involved, several cars were stranded in the infield of Turn 3. Under the policy adopted in 2017, drivers who leave their cars are ineligible to finish the race.

That forced playoff drivers Chase Elliott and Chase Briscoe to remain inside their cars in hopes of getting back to pit road to undergo minimal repairs. NASCAR gave both a tow back to pit road, and they were able to get back out on the racetrack and meet minimum speed. The sanctioning body has previously said that under the DVP, unless you have four flat tires, a tow back to pit road would mean your race is over.

NASCAR’s inconsistency with damaged vehicle policy leaves confusion in garage

Just last week at Kansas, Josh Berry found himself involved in a Lap 1 incident, sustaining minimal damage. Berry had four flats as a result and needed a tow back to pit road. NASCAR, however, determined his race to be over.

Stevens said that unless he missed it, he doesn’t recall NASCAR suddenly changing the rule for Talladega.

“I can tell you what the rule has been,” Stevens said. “The rule has been if you’re involved in an incident and you can’t drive it back, you are out of the race. I was a victim of that a dozen times in my career. That has been the rule. And we saw it with the 12 [Ryan Blaney] at Watkins Glen. We saw it with the 4 [Josh Berry] at Kansas, saw it with us at Michigan. Every week you can pick a car that’s probably been a victim of that.

“And then this weekend, that wasn’t the case. There was nothing communicated to me, to my team or anybody in the walls of Joe Gibbs Racing that that was going to change. Something doesn’t seem right or sit right with me that that just changed on the fly and wasn’t communicated to the teams.”

NASCAR’s Elton Sawyer clarifies damaged vehicle policy after Talladega chaos

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, added context to the DVP during a Tuesday appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

“With that program and with that policy, we’ve said that we were gonna take a deeper dive into it in the offseason just to make sure it’s still providing the efficiencies, it’s still providing the benefits that we want from that,” Sawyer said. “But be also able to correct some things that obviously hasn’t worked as well with that policy that we’ve liked. Our goal from day one when this policy came into place was not to put good cars or good trucks out of the race.

“The way we’ve executed that over the last three years — the policy hasn’t changed. There’s been time that we have towed vehicles back to pit road to be able to correct their issues. There’s a very small list of things you can change once you get back there. Toe links is one of them. The cars that we did tow back this past weekend were able to make those modifications. Get back out on the racetrack and meet minimum speed.”