NASCAR drivers seeking clarity on restart rule – ESPN
CHICAGO — With passing at a premium in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, drivers can feel the intensity on restarts, knowing that first lap, if not the first turn, on a restart can make the difference between winning and losing.
And this is how Brad Keselowski describes trying to figure out what to do:
“I still view restarts as rock, paper, scissors,” he said Friday during Chase Media Day in Chicago.
Part of that view comes from scrutiny of how NASCAR officiates restarts. Heading into the Chase for the Sprint Cup, drivers have complained NASCAR has swallowed the whistle recently and not called for a drive-through penalty — in which a driver must drive down pit road at pit-road speed — for illegal restarts.
The rule is somewhat simple. NASCAR has a zone, designated by red marks painted on the outside wall. The leader must step on the gas to restart the race in the zone and no one else can accelerate before the leader.
It is supposed to give the leader an advantage by being in control of the restart. But drivers in second place have not always kept pace with the leader before the restart, laying back and then accelerating in hopes of timing when the leader will hit the gas, in effect getting a running start. A driver in third can lay back as well, get a push from the car behind and burst past the leader thanks to the momentum.
Because of the gamesmanship, drivers have mashed the gas well before the restart zone, at other times past zone and even hitting the gas momentarily, letting up for a moment and then hitting the gas full-bore.
“Put it simply, if you do the restarts by the book, the way they say to do it, you get passed by about four guys every restart,” Carl Edwards said. “So nobody really knows what to do.”
There are several potential fixes. The first would be for NASCAR to rule with more of an iron fist in what many see as a ball-strike type of call.
“I’m not comfortable one bit with how they’re officiating it,” Kyle Busch said. “They need to step in. It’s gone too long.
“It’s really stupid how these restarts are being handled by the drivers. … I always have in the back of my mind there’s a chance I’m going to get black-flagged for a bad restart or a poor choice in how I handle the restart. Some of these other guys, I don’t think they give a crap. They just go and do whatever the heck they want, and they get away with it.”
Matt Kenseth appeared to have left early on the final restart Saturday night at Richmond. He concedes he went a few feet before the line but certainly was in the vicinity of the line.
“If you’re the leader, and the second-place guy is two car lengths behind you because they know when you’re going to go and those guys get rolling towards you before you get going, I’m not going to be third before I get to Turn 1,” said Kenseth, who went on to win the race.
“The leader has to take some liberties to look around him and see what his competitors are doing because he is the leader and he should not be at a disadvantage.”
Joey Logano, who was running second to Kenseth, hopes for more clarity. Logano’s Penske Racing teammate, Ryan Blaney, was penalized for leaving prior to the restart zone at a truck race last month at Bristol.
“We see what happened there with Blaney and the truck race,and then we see what happened last week — now it is like, ‘OK, where do we need to be?'” Logano said. “We have had a talk with them [at NASCAR] already, so we will wait and see where it goes
“I believe it will be fixed and we will be able to race hard, and if it comes down to something like that at the end of a race for a championship, then I would expect them to stand up and make the call.”
Drivers also suggested increasing the size of the restart zone. The zone currently is determined by taking the pit-road speed — which can vary from 30 mph to 55 mph depending on the track — and doubling that number to get the number of feet for the zone. So at short tracks, the zone could be 60-70 feet while at bigger tracks with longer pit roads, it is 110 feet. A NASCAR spokesman said there are no plans to change the size of the zones.
“From everything I’ve heard, it was pretty obvious Matt went early,” said four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon. “But the thing is, he knows they’re not going to call it.
“And until they call it, guys are going to continue to push that, and it’s mainly because the restart box isn’t big enough. You make the restart box bigger, they’re not going to have to worry about calling that because now you can [go] anywhere in that box and get that edge that you deserve.”
Sprint Cup Series Director Richard Buck pledged to drivers during a prerace meeting last month at Bristol that NASCAR officials would make the judgment call to penalize a driver, and when Clint Bowyer asked him to enforce the rule, he responded: “Trust me, we’ll enforce the rule and I hope you’re not it.”
The drivers hope he’s right.
“Right now, we’re in a situation where the most important part of the race, no one really understands how they’re going to be officiated,” Edwards said. “It leaves it kind of wide-open.
“NASCAR has taken a much firmer stance, and I have a feeling there will be some penalties soon.”
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