NASCAR officials took to their podcast “Hauler Talk” to do some “splaining” why they allowed Corey Day’s crew to continue working on the car during the red flag and gave him his laps back after the driver’s number 17 car was hit in the grille and subsequently damaged the radiator by an errant sewer cover.
In creating the street course all of the sewer covers were welded shut to prevent them from flying up and damaging the cars.
But a weekend filled with trucks and 3,400 pound cars continually running around the course, one of the covers had worked itself loose and took off bouncing among the cars before landing inside Day’s front grille.
NASCAR Vice President of Racing Communications Mike Forde noted that there was a great deal of discussion over the matter and that the final decision was not unanimous.
Forde noted, “in this case, we felt the big thing was this was a temporary course, and it wasn’t built for racing. And so, some of those other ‘racing deals,’ it didn’t exactly match what happened here. This came up on a city street, and (Day) didn’t really do anything wrong.”
He added, “it was just horrible, horrible luck. If we can sort of fix that and give him his luck back, we felt that it was the right thing to do.”
NASCAR plans on having more in depth conversations on how to handle such a situation at a later date; should it ever happen again.
Day was allowed to get the four laps he was down while the car was being repaired back; however, he had to run the circuit four times at caution speed to equalize the fuel load in his car and tire wear.
Day’s incident was not the first time something similar had happened – Jeff Gordon had a piece of the track itself come up and hit his car.
Forde notes, “instead of a cover going through the radiator, what if it’s a piece of ballast from another car. That’s bad luck, too, but I think we probably will look at that as a little more of a legitimate racing deal that you’ve seen before hundreds of times throughout all levels of racing, and it’s a bummer for that competitor, but it’s kind of part of the game.”
He continued, “a cover coming off on a street race on a naval base is not typically part of the game, so that’s why we made the decision we did.”
All repairs to the course – including rewelding sewer covers and replacing fences and walls – were done by NASCAR officials. NASCAR rewelded the missing cover and checked the remaining covers, giving them an extra weld during the extended red flag condition.
As for allowing Day’s crew to work on the car during the red flag condition, NASCAR cited the EIRI caluse – “Except in rare instances”. If a driver’s crew even touches a car during a red flag, the driver can be disqualified.
Forde said, “we don’t do it often and don’t like doing it often. It’s for very unique circumstances. Things arise where you have to say, ‘You know what? This doesn’t feel right. Logic needs to prevail here. Even though the rules say one thing, in this case, we need to kind of tweak our rules.’ “