NASCAR officials have tweaked the opening day schedules for upcoming Spring Cup Series races at Las Vegas, Phoenix and Auto Club Speedway after delays in pre-qualifying inspection a week ago resulted in 13 teams failing to make it onto the track in time for qualifying.
Friday’s opening practice for Sprint Cup teams, originally scheduled to last 1 hour, 25 minutes, has been shortened by 10 minutes at all three tracks. Qualifying for the three events will now take place five minutes later than previously scheduled.
Those changes provide an additional 15 minutes of time for teams to prepare their cars for inspection and for officials to complete the inspection process.
Among those failing to complete the pre-qualifying inspection last week at Atlanta Motor Speedway were the teams of Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth. Their starting positions for the race, as well as those of others who also failed to make a qualifying lap, were determined based on their teams’ 2014 owner points standings.
Because of the delay, NASCAR began qualifying 15 minutes later than originally scheduled at Atlanta in an attempt to get all cars through and out onto the grid.
“We have a good track record of making adjustments that are in the best interest of the teams and the garage area,” Richard Buck, NASCAR’s managing director of the Sprint Cup Series, said, “and the revisions in these upcoming weekend schedules are an example of that.”
The revised schedules, which also note that qualifying inspection now begins five minutes after the completion of Friday’s practice, are for the three West Coast races. No adjustments have been made for races beyond the Auto Club event.
Teams have 50 minutes after practice to present their cars for inspection, at which time all work on the entries must cease.
The order in which teams present their cars for pre-qualifying inspection is determined by random draw earlier in the day. However, teams have been allowed to go through inspection before the 50-minute window has elapsed, not based on the random draw, if they were ready to begin the process.
The holdup in inspection at Atlanta appeared to be in the area of NASCAR’s laser alignment station where approximately 20 cars had to make multiple passes, mostly due to rear camber issues. Every car is allowed one pass through the station before second or third passes, when necessary, are allowed. Thus cars that didn’t clear the station on their first attempt were required to wait until all others had made an initial pass before being allowed to make a second pass.
“That’s the big one,” Trent Owens, crew chief for the Richard Petty Motorsports No. 43 team with driver Aric Almirola, said of the laser platform. “It’s not the templates and that (other) stuff.”
Owens said his team, which drew 32nd in the random draw, made it through the entire inspection process on its first attempt. “We were probably through 45 minutes before qualifying started,” he said.
The laser alignment machine has been in use since the start of the 2013 season. It accurately measures specific points underneath each car, checking items such as camber, wheelbase and rear axle positioning. Measurements are precise, and within 1/1,000th of an inch in most cases.
That precision, and the fact that last week’s event was the first for teams with the new rules package for non-restricted tracks, resulted in an unexpected backlog.
“The problem is, when we went through there were 20 cars sitting outside that gate waiting to go through a second time,” Owens said. “It’s not as easy as rolling up on the ramps, rolling off and going on. It’s a process … each car probably takes five minutes by the time it … aligns the right front tire, goes through a whole system; it’s not a quick process.
“But … I don’t think there’s any fault in the efficiency. And it’s a pass or fail. I’d rather it be that way than to give this guy a little bit and this guy not. There are always a couple of sides to the story, but the schedule probably hurt (at Atlanta) more than anything.
“There have been times in the past when 20 cars have been sitting outside (the line), just nobody ever knew about it. I’ve been one of them.”
Chad Knaus, race-winning crew chief for Johnson, said after Sunday’s win that he thought “our wheel offset was a little bit off (in inspection).”
“Maybe our skew was off a little bit with the alignment of the rear‑end housing,” he said.
“When we rolled out of the garage for qualifying inspection, there was really only an hour left before qualifying was to begin. The whole day was kind of slow. I think once everybody gets familiar with what their jobs are, I think that will start to get faster, go faster, where we won’t have this much of a backlog.
“It’s difficult to do that. NASCAR is trying to provide a level playing field for everybody, but it’s something that needs to be addressed.”
