William Byron crew chief Rudy Fugle calls for NASCAR to allow teams to make tire, pit decisions themselves

Rudy Fugle — the crew chief for William Byron’s No. 24 team — is calling for some changes to NASCAR’s future procedures as it pertains to utilizing wet water tires.

Since the USA Today 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway featured the unprecedented use of wet weather tires and non-competitive pit stops to finish the race on Sunday evening, there’s been some great debate as to where the sport stands on the matter in the future. Mother Nature will of course test NASCAR sooner rather than later, that’s just the way it goes.

Moving forward, Fugle is of the opinion that NASCAR needs to allow each individual team to have a little more freedom, and choose which tires they’d like to utilize, and when they’d like to put them on throughout a race.

“I do think you’re going to have to have the sanctioning body call it, ‘This is an official wet race. We aren’t going back.’ There’s a couple of things that you’re going to have to decide on, because you’ll get yourselves into situations where we won’t know — you know, because yesterday, we could’ve called it, ‘Hey, this is a damp race, you can come put rains on,’ well before the lightning came. There was a window there where we could’ve ran another 20 minutes or so, before the lightning came, but the track was wet, and you’ll get that situation, where the lightning is coming and they know it but we don’t, so there are a couple of situation where I think that they need to dictate what’s going on, that can really mess up and not be a fair race, for anybody calling the strategy,” Byron’s crew chief said, via SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

“But besides that, once we go back, after the lighting was done, we put the tires on and we go racing, I fully think that we should be able to, ‘Hey, you spun out,’ you should be able to go get some new tires. ‘Hey, you hurt your tires — your rain tires, trying to come through the field,’ you should be able to come get another set and see if you can make some progress. All of that, and then at the very end of the race, you know, a lot of people, I bet half the people would’ve put dry (tires) on, and we could’ve seen what would’ve happened. So I definitely think there’s a lot more openness, where the teams and the drivers can be in control, for probably 80% of the decisions that need to be made.”

That makes a ton of sense coming from Fugle. In the end, his driver in Byron didn’t exactly benefit from resuming the race, as the No. 24 finished P26 on the afternoon. On the other hand, the victor in Christopher Bell was extremely enthusiastic with the way NASCAR handled everything on Sunday.

“I honestly thought that they handled it perfectly,” Bell said, regarding NASCAR’s decision to have non-competitive pit stops at New Hampshire, via FOX’s Bob Pockrass. “I don’t know — it’s going to be so tough, whenever you start introducing competitive pit stops, because you run the risk of really injuring people. It’s all about being cautious, right? But there’s such a reward in executing pit road good, that I don’t think it’s worth — the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, right? That’s just walking a tightrope, whenever you start introducing wet pit roads, and slick tires on damp pit roads. 

“So I don’t know what the answer is, but I would be really afraid of having to execute pit road without injuring people or hitting people.”

With plenty of mixed reviews, we’ll see what NASCAR decides to do in the future, but Rudy Fugle certainly makes some salient points when discussing what we could see moving forward.