Shane van Gisbergen and teammate Ross Chastain were spotted driving their cars through the grass after the Cup Series race at Gateway.
They weren’t the only drivers stung for the act, with Team Penske’s Joey Logano also touring the grass.
It’s widely accepted that picking up rubber debris to gain weight is par for the course, but the excessive off-track excursion raised eyebrows.
In the days after the incident, Cup Series managing director Brad Moran said it would be flagged with the NASCAR teams.
Speaking on the in-house-produced Hauler Talk podcast, NASCAR managing director of communications Mike Forde said there could be serious punishments in future.
“We did not care for it, not one bit,” Forde said.
“We’re going to just remind teams this is something where we actually have a rule.
“I think we’re going to give (Trackhouse) a little bit of a warning.
“But there is a rule that says what they did — you could argue — broke a rule, and there could have been repercussions for it.
“But I think we’re going to allow the teams sort of a gimme here and say moving forward be aware that we are going to be looking at this.”
Forde did not explicitly cite which rule the drivers may have breached, but 6421.b notes cars are considered to be impounded or in parc ferme conditions once they take the chequered flag.
That means changes cannot be made to the car.
In any case, NASCAR foreshadowed serious penalties, including disqualification, if it believes anything untoward is happening.
“That is something that we’ll frown upon in a significant way,” Forde said.
“Whether that is going to be an in-race penalty or a DQ, that is going to be determined after the event. It depends on how blatant the violation was.
“I don’t think we’re going to outline exactly what the repercussions would be because we’re going to take it on a case-by-case basis.”
In Formula 1, drivers are often seen off the traditional racing line to collect debris and rubber “marbles” to add weight to their tyres.
NASCAR driver Corey LaJoie said the practice is common in stock car racing too, for the drivers in the Playoffs to avoid being underweight.
“They post all the Playoff cars [in inspection],” LaJoie said. “Trying to pick up a couple pounds of grass, rocks, rubber to let your car chief feel a little better when you roll across the scale.”
Last year, Alex Bowman was stung for being under weight at the Charlotte ROVAL, which cost him a chance to advance in the Playoffs.
Whether the Trackhouse Racing drivers were running it fine and trying to add weight is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, NASCAR does not want to see any silly business.
“These teams are pushing it so close to the line on weight,” Forde said.
“They know exactly how to math it out where we give them a 17-pound tolerance after the race.
“In Darlington, we measured every single playoff car, and there were a couple of cars that were within a pound of almost failing and being DQ’d.”
NASCAR continues at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sunday, September 14 at 9:30am AEST with coverage live and exclusively on Fox Sports and Kayo Sports. Van Gisbergen will start 28th.
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