NASCAR says crew chief suspensions for loose lug nuts to continue
Expect NASCAR crew chief suspensions for loose lug nuts to continue for the foreseeable future.
That's the word from NASCAR senior vice president of competition Scott Miller, who spoke Friday at Michigan International Speedway, where NASCAR is testing a new low-downforce package this weekend.
NASCAR has chosen crew chief suspensions as its method of enforcing its recently revised lug-nut policy requiring all Sprint Cup cars must have all five lug nuts tight on each of the four wheels at all times.
If a car is found with loose or missing lug nuts, NASCAR suspends that car's crew chief, as it so far this year with four crew chiefs, including Chad Johnston who is not with driver Kyle Larson this weekend at Michigan International Speedway.
And Friday at MIS, NASCAR's Miller confirmed the suspensions would continue when violations are discovered.
"As far as the penalties go, that's what we plan on continuing to do to get it in check," said Miller. "And, as we've said along, continue to work on different technology items to be able to instantaneously see things happening on pit road to a higher degree than we can today.
"And we're getting close on some of those things," Miller said. "Can't really talk about what all those are, but I think you can expect to see some different strategies there on our side coming hopefully sooner rather than later."
Prior to the start of the 2015 season, NASCAR quit requiring teams to tighten lug nuts on all stops. Some teams went to running four lug nuts on what side and three on the other, which led to driver criticisms that it was unsafe.
That caused NASCAR to change its rules and now teams have to get every lug nut tight on each stop. Failure to do so results in suspensions, four of which have been served already. And expect to see a lot more as the summer goes on.
