Insiders critical of NASCAR over track limit controversy at COTA

Over the NASCAR weekend at COTA officials, drivers, and teams were confused over which corners were having track limits enforced. No calls were made in Turn 6 during the Xfinity Series race, but that somehow went unnoticed until Sunday.

In the middle of the race, drivers were wondering what the deal was. Many had seen others cut Turn 6 with no penalty. Word began to spread that track limits were not being enforced at Turn 6 coming out of the essess. Turns 3-4-5 were being enforced.

Eventually, word spread, and despite even certain officials telling spotters otherwise, there were no track limits in Turn 6. The NASCAR drivers at COTA were free to cut that corner as they set up on the wide right to make the turn into 6A and 6B.

Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic had criticisms for NASCAR over the COTA track limit debacle. They discussed it after the race on The Teardown podcast.

“In Stage 1, social media starts lighting up with a lot of questions because leader Shane van Gisbergen is cutting Turn 6 on every lap,” Gluck explained. “People have all these pictures and they’re sending in questions, what’s going on? Finally, Stage 1 ends and Kyle Busch comes on the radio and he had been right behind SVG … His team says, ‘Hold on we’re going to check with NASCAR.’ This is during the Stage 1 break. And they come back and they say, ‘Guess what? NASCAR says they’re going to police Turns 3, 4, and 5 but not Turn 6.

“So, feel free to go through there. After the race, Kyle Busch was upset about this and said, ‘NASCAR ain’t got a clue,’ about what they’re doing officiating-wise with the essess.”

NASCAR COTA controversy is ‘podcast fodder’

The two journalists did get a bit critical, but not in a serious manner. It is annoying to even have to talk about officiating after such a great race unfolds like Sunday. But here we are talking about officiating.

“I mean, it sounds like a conspiracy, it sounds like podcast fodder,” Bianchi said. “Like the NASCAR Hauler Talk podcast. … ‘Listen guys, we can’t let a week go by without always having something to talk about, give us a little bit of a bone here.'”

“Hey, well, I’m sure they’ll address it,” Gluck added. “Mike Forde, Amanda Ellis, and Nate Ryan will talk about this. Yeah, it was sort of like, uh, that’s kind of weird. It was weird how it unfolded, I guess. I don’t think it changed the race.”

Bianchi did get serious about it. Just, why are we even having this conversation? How hard would it be for NASCAR to tell teams explicitly that Turn 6 will not be enforced?

“No, but we’re talking about officiating again,” Bianchi started to conclude. “It’s a minor thing, I want to make sure [I say that]. It’s a minor thing and it really didn’t alter the outcome in any way but it’s a weird little cutesy thing that probably didn’t need to happen. Again, just have a race where we don’t have to talk about officiating, big, small, medium, whatever.”

NASCAR had issues this past weekend at COTA. Hopefully, we don’t see more officiating issues at Phoenix. While I’m hopeful, I’m not holding my breath.