By: Ashley McCubbin

For people, weight loss is talked about being a great thing if you want to get slim and trim. Though for racecars, it unfortunately results in a visit by the officials.

During the pace laps of the Hooters 250, a weight spacer fell out of the rear of Chase Briscoe’s car, which was in violation of 12.5.2.7.4.d of the NASCAR rule book. The rule pertains to “loss or separation of added ballast from the vehicle.”

As a result, crew chief Richard Boswell, car chief Nick Hutchins and engineer DJ Vanderley have been suspended for the next four NASCAR Xfinity Series points events. Notably, the suspension begins tomorrow with the second event in the doubleheader weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

To meet the minimum weight requirements set by the sanctioning body, teams add weight – blocks of tungsten, in the frame rails to their discretion. The rule was brought in as a safety measure, due to the dangers if one of the blocks were to come loose under green flag conditions. Jamie Dick once had a block go through his windshield during an Xfinity Series event; he was uninjured.

Once the spacer fell out, Briscoe came down pit road, going seven laps down while the team fixed the issue. The Stewart-Haas Racing driver did not give up, though, clawing his way back for a seventh-place finish.

“It was definitely a frustrating day, but we can’t hang our heads,” he said. “We had another really good, fast race car and we just made a silly mistake this week and forgot something.  Last week, I made a silly mistake on pit road, so it all evens out.  The positive is that we had a really fast race car.  In fact, I felt like we were the fastest car by quite a bit.  The good thing is we get another chance at it tomorrow and hopefully we can put it all together and not make any mistakes and get another win.”

Briscoe felt if there was a caution before he made his green flag pit stop, he could have been in contention for the victory.

“Overall, having no practice is tough because you miss little things like that, but on the same side no practice and the amount of speed we’ve had each and every week is just a testament of how good our race cars are and how good of a team we have,” he added.

Now heading into Sunday, the focus is not making anymore mistakes and putting together a perfect race – something he feels they have failed to do since winning at Darlington Raceway.

“The last two races now we were by far the best car and made one mistake and it cost us,” he commented. “These races aren’t easy to win.  You have to do everything right and we’ve kind of been living proof of that.  It doesn’t matter how much speed you have if you make mistakes in this series, you’re not gonna win these races and we’ve just got to clean everything up.  Fortunately, we still have some time before the playoffs start where you can’t afford to make mistakes like this.”

It marks the second time a penalty of this nature has been handed out by NASCAR in 2020, as Denny Hamlin suffered the same fate during the pace laps for the Coca-Cola 600. He was unable to overcome the issue, finishing 30th, seven laps down to race winner Brad Keselowski.

EMAIL ASHLEY AT ashley.mccubbin@popularspeed.com

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