Kyle Busch’s winning car failed inspection and was disqualified, handing the victory in Saturday’s Xfinity race to Austin Cindric, who crossed the finish line second. Busch’s car failed post-race height measurements for the left rear. Cindric’s car passed inspection after the race.
The team has 24 hours to appeal the decision.
Cindric has now won three races in a row, including his doubleheader sweep last weekend at Kentucky Speedway. Busch is scored last in the 37-car field.
The most recent Xfinity winner to be disqualified was Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 18 car at Darlington last year. That car failed a pair of height requirements and Denny Hamlin’s win was taken away. Cole Custer was declared the winner of that race.
Wayne Auton, managing director of the Xfinity Series, said officials did not see any damage that would have caused the problem with the left rear of Busch’s car Saturday.
Because the team can appeal, Auton declined to say by how much Busch’s car was too low but that it was “definitely in the red.”
“The teams know the guidelines, they know the rules,” Auton said after the race.
Brian Wilson, crew chief for Cindric, explained how a car that was low in the left rear might benefit on the track.
“They’ve always got fast race cars,” Wilson said of the Joe Gibbs Racing team. “I don’t want to take anything away from those guys because they’re really good, but the saying in racing is always low left and light. That helps get your car down and helps lower the CG and there’s a reason why there are rules in place. It’s our job to toe the line and I’m always worried about stuff like that. I definitely feel bad for those guys. That’s not how you want to lose a race. They executed a really good race and they were out ahead of us by a good amount. Maybe on the restart it played a little bit of a difference, but I feel like we’ve got some things that we should work on as far as restarts go, so I’m not gonna say that was the reason why those guys were in Victory Lane earlier, but it definitely doesn’t hurt.”
Auton also discussed matters involving Justin Allgaier and Chase Briscoe during the race.
NASCAR penalized Allgaier for blending on to the track too soon after a pit stop. Allgaier served his pass-through penalty down pit road on Lap 169 of the 201-lap race.
“Whenever we saw (Allgaier) go up the racetrack, we pulled up the video as quickly as we could to make sure what we saw with the 7 exiting pit road was what we saw with the naked eye,” Auton said. ” With all the video we had up top, definitely he went up the racetrack in (Turns) 1 and 2. I pulled up the driver meeting notes before we issued the penalty to make sure that I didn’t write it wrong, we had it out there and it plainly states that exiting pit road you must stay below the white line until exiting Turn 2. He went up the racetrack. … I had a conversation with Justin about it. He sees our point. The penalty was assessed like it should be.
NBCSN’s cameras caught Chase Briscoe throwing a water bottle out of his car on to the track before a pit stop. He said after the race he was getting rid of the water bottle to help save time before getting another water bottle on what would be a two-tire pit stop.
Auton said he wasn’t aware of that situation but “definitely will look into that. That’s not something that we really like to see. I don’t think all of the drivers like to see it either.”
