NASCAR to review controversial New Hampshire restart

NASCAR willreview the restart in which Joey Logano questioned how Aric Almirola came to be leading the field at New Hampshire.

“I think in that case we’ll go back and review it this week,” said Steve O’Donnell, the executive vice president and chief racing development officer, during his weekly appearance on The Morning Drive on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “It’s tough for us to know the exact speed of a car during a restart, so anytime we cannot make ourselves part of a race or make a call, that’s the first option.

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“In that case, we chose not to make the call, but we’ve got to go back and review it, review the speeds, and I think you’ll see us address restarts heading into Pocono and remind the drivers what we expect as well.”

Logano first expressed his displeasure with Almirola slowing down and stacking up the field in the restart box over his in-car radio, saying “that’s a b.s. restart. Totally b.s.” Almirola restarted on the outside as the leader with Logano to the inside for the dash to end Stage 2.

As Almirola drove away from the field before they crossed the start/finish line, Logano said he was trying to make sure it didn’t appear he had jumped the restart. The reigning Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion later said he didn’t understand NASCAR officials giving Almirola a warning.

“He brake-checked the field,” said Logano. “You’re not supposed to do that. I don’t know how they regulate it – they gave him a warning, which I don’t really know what that means. Warning to what, not do that again? He’s wasn’t in the lead again, so he never had the opportunity to do it, so he got away with it.”

Reviewing different aspects from race weekend is not a new practice, said O’Donnell.

“Every lap of the race is reviewed,” he said. “We have our entire group of folks who are in the tower, as well as the officials around the racetrack sit down and talk about the race, what happened, what calls were made, what calls may not have been made that should have, what we can learn, certainly communicate back to the garage area if there were questions. That starts immediately after the race, with the ability for a team to come in and have a conversation about a call that we potentially made or a scoring issue, so that’s the first part.

“I saw Joey Logano right after the race and told him, hey, we’d be following up probably Tuesday once we review everything on restarts; he obviously had a question, as the fans did. So, we’ll do that, and correct anything we need [to], and if it’s a bigger issue that affects the entire garage, we’ll address it with the garage and then reiterate it in the driver’s meeting.”