NASCAR warned most of the field about maintaining minimum speed when many drivers were conserving fuel during the first stage of Sunday’s Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway.
During the latest episode of the “Hauler Talk” podcast, NASCAR vice president of racing communications Mike Forde said “75% of the field at one point” was under minimum speed, which NASCAR relayed to all the teams through its Microsoft Teams chat system.
“We can IM individual teams or the entirety of pit road,” Forde said. “And so we IM’d all of pit road and said, ‘Hey, there are X amount of cars that have not reached minimum speed. If you guys don’t pick it up, then we’re going to have to step in.’ And soon after, they picked it up. So that message was delivered, and that’s why we did not black flag anybody.”
Minimum speed is determined according to the race track. At Talladega, the minimum speed is within 12.5% of the pole position.
— NASCAR.com —