As the haulers head for Daytona to begin Speedweeks and kicking off the 2018 racing season, NASCAR has tweaked a few rules when it comes to the crash clock and qualifying stage time.
Last season NASCAR no longer allowed teams to make extensive repairs to cars after a crash. Teams had five minutes to make any repairs that could be made on pit road. Teams were only allowed to take a car to the garage for repairs when it was for a mechanical issue.
This season NASCAR has amended the “crash clock” from five minutes to six minutes.
Last season in order to dissuade teams from abusing their repair time privilege, any team that exceeded the over the wall crew limit had a penalty of parking the car and being listed out of the race. This season, the rule has been changed from being parked to being docked two laps.
NASCAR has also changed the qualifying format for some of the tracks. For tracks using the three round qualifying procedure, the middle round has been reduced from 20 minutes to 15 minutes. Frequently teams sit on pit road for most of the round and do not use the fully allotted time to qualify for the race.