On Thursday, at least nine of 16 playoff drivers asked about restarts during Chase media day in downtown Chicago expressed no satisfaction with the current situation.
-“I’m not comfortable one bit with how they’re officiating it,” Kyle Busch said. “I think they need to step in. I think it’s gone too long.”
-“You’ve got to call it,” Jeff Gordon said. “If somebody deliberately jumps, you’ve got to call it. And it’s got to be a black and white decision.”
-“”¦ All you’ve got to do is call somebody on ’em once and that’ll fix the problem,” Clint Bowyer said.
-“Most of the time when someone jumps a start, Ray Charles can see it,” Logano said. “It is usually blatant.”
The suggestions Thursday went beyond enforcing the existing rule. Gordon and Hamlin said the restart zone was too small at every track. Some drivers said NASCAR should use technology to help with officiating the restarts – as the sanctioning body does with pit road penalties and its inspection process. Others said consistency either way was all that would be needed. Any of those would be better than the status quo, in which drivers aren’t exactly sure where the line is and NASCAR prefers the competitors figure it out. “It’s very grey,” defending champion Kevin Harvick said. “I don’t think any of us really know for sure how far you can push it, but you have to push it because you can. How far is too far? I don’t think anybody really knows.”
It could become a game of inches if NASCAR starts calling penalties for starting before the zone begins. So in the place of a crackdown, officials have continuously warned drivers to restart properly – or else. But the “or else” part never comes. In a statement to USA TODAY Sports on Thursday, NASCAR executive vice president Steve O’Donnell reiterated officials would “like to continue to let it play out on the track.” “With that said, we understand that the stakes are very high and drivers are looking for any possible advantage they can find,” he said. “We will continue to monitor every restart using the technology available to us to ensure competitive and fair racing. Simply put, we are prepared to make a call if we need to.”(USA Today)(9-18-2015)
UPDATE: The debate regarding restarts rages on and NASCAR plans to address the issue prior to Sunday’s Sprint Cup race at Chicagoland. NASCAR officials will take some time during Sunday’s pre-race drivers meeting at Chicagoland Speedway to reinforce their position on how race restarts are officiated, particularly as the Chase for the Sprint Cup gets underway. “We probably have to reemphasize our position on restarts and the fact that we’ve left that up to the drivers,” NASCAR Vice Chairman Mike Helton told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio in an interview Thursday from ChaseFest in downtown Chicago. “In the meantime, there is a right and wrong way to do it and it’s hard sometimes for us to figure out that line. It’s a subjective part of the sport that’s still left – highly visible, highly debated.” Helton said NASCAR officials at their research and development center in Concord, N.C., are trying to figure out how to incorporate technology and take more of the subjectivity of the call out of the decisions. “Until we get there though with something the industry will all buy in on as the step to take, it’s up to us. We’ve got to be quick in our decisions and we’ve got to make them,” he said. “More often than not, I stand behind the calls we make. I think we try to do our best. Restarts is something that comes with a lot of debate particularly if you have one like we did at Richmond.”(Motorsport)(9-19-2015)
