The Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL always throws a wrench into the plans of teams. The track tends to provide strange and quirky races, with wrecks playing a big role in the outcome. I covered the first one for Frontstretch in 2018, and that race had a little of everything.
Sunday’s race had new elements due to the revised infield and re-aligned front chicane. The chicane caused a series of problems on Saturday (Oct. 12) as drivers dealt with physical issues with the curbs. That resulted in Saturday night modifications since drivers were dealing with a lot of the same issues that they were last year at Watkins Glen International.
The new curbs were much smaller and didn’t cause the same problems. However, they did result in NASCAR having to officiate track limits much more carefully. Bubba Wallace and Martin Truex Jr. found that out the hard way.
That said, Steve Letarte did a good job here of explaining exactly why Wallace had to make a stop-and-go at the backstretch chicane. Some fans watching the race Sunday might have found this penalty infuriating, but I’m more or less used to it.
Having covered roughly 30 sports car weekends for the site since 2017 when I first got my IMSA hard card, this is a regular thing. If anything, NASCAR is stricter than IMSA or SRO America on this issue since they don’t give warnings. They go straight to penalties.
Much of the coverage of the curb issues occurred during Countdown to Green. It only became a factor in the race when people got penalized as noted above. Had the bigger curbs still been in play on Sunday, I really don’t think you would have seen the penalties … at least from NASCAR. There would have been different penalties. More physical ones.
At this point, the biggest story to come out of Sunday was Alex Bowman getting disqualified for being underweight. It appears that this may have come out of Bowman launching himself off the frontstretch curbs three laps into the race and hitting the wall. Some of the available replays (unfortunately, not the one that made the broadcast) indicated that a small piece came out of the car when that happened.
Hendrick Motorsports announced that it will not appeal the penalty and will accept the DQ. If it would have appealed, then it would have been an expedited one like what Sam Mayer had after Talladega Superspeedway.
Had NBC shown a different one of the NASCAR Drive cameras, maybe the little piece that came off that…
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