When Myatt Snider jumped in the number 48 car for an ailing Alex Bowman at Circuit of the Americas race last Sunday, it wasn’t an arbitrary decision to just grab someone to finish the race.
As a part of their Hauler Talk podcast this week, NASCAR addressed the issues and the steps required to get Snider behind the wheel.
The process of having a driver on “stand by” or as an emergency replacement normally takes hours, but on Sunday the process took only about 15 minutes.
At some point during the race, Alex Bowman reported to Hendrick Motorsports that he was no feeling well and needed to get out of the car. The search was on to find and get approval for a replacement.
Luckily for the 48 team, O’Reilly Auto Parts Series driver was on pit road assisting FOX pit reporter Jamie Little.
NASCAR managing director of communications Mike Forde spoke on what happened next saying, “obviously, we would have loved to take hours, but we didn’t have that luxury. And so the conversation wasn’t a lengthy one by any means.”
The process began with Hendrick Motorsports vice president of competition Chad Knaus sending a text requesting expedited approval of Snider.
While Snider is approved for the O’Reilly Series, he has never driven a Cup Series car but since he is licensed for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, he could be considered as a replacement driver.
Race control quickly held an impromptu in-race approval meeting with Chad Little, chief racing development officer John Probst, Cup Series director Brad Moran and senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer. The discussion included Snider’s robust resume. The fact that Snider had never been behind the wheel of a Next Gen car was not discussed but the type of track they were running made the decision easier.
Forde noted, “looking at his resume, we decided in race control that he would be OK to race a road course in the NASCAR Cup Series. When you’re going through each of the series, the first approval typically is for road courses, next is short tracks, then intermediates and then superspeedways.”
Snider now has approval to run short tracks and road course races in the Cup Series.
Forde added, “if this was anywhere but COTA or Martinsville or maybe even Phoenix, he probably would not be qualified to run. If this was Darlington or Homestead, certainly Daytona or Talladega, we would probably would have had to tell Hendrick Motorsports that they needed to find someone else.”
NASCAR Inspector David Green supervised the driver swap on pit road to ensure all safety measures were followed properly; including the new driver is properly attired with firesuit, helmet and head-and-neck restraint.
Once in the car, Green also had to ensure proper line of sight saying, “before he ever put his helmet on, I’m kind of looking at his eyesight line compared to the headrest and then his shoulder belt angle, stuff like that. Now, the big question would be what happens if none of this lines up, and we’re in a bad spot? Then we start digging a little bit deeper (on) do we really need to change the insert to get Myatt lower in the seat. But we didn’t have to go that path because he almost looked perfect sitting in that car. HMS and all the teams do a great job on the Cup side of making sure the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed. I really had no concerns with Myatt getting in the car other than the simple height of Myatt vs. Alex. He fit right in there like a glove and it was really a smooth transition.”
It was a rough day for drivers at COTA, Erik Jones had also reported not feeling well and had Harrison Burton on standby if needed.