Chase drivers want clarification on NASCAR restarts

JOLIET, Ill. As NASCAR’s Chase starts, drivers are concerned about race restarts.

Some are taking advantage of what has become a murky situation whenever the green flag is dropped to get a race back underway. Others want things to go by the book.

“I believe (with) restarts, there’s still a lot of gray area that I don’t think everyone in the garage understands exactly what is allowable and what’s not,” said Carl Edwards, who starts 15th in Sunday’s MyAFibRisk.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. “It’s really tough to decide.”

Confusion among the drivers resurfaced last week after Matt Kenseth seemed to get an early jump on a late restart while leading at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway. Kenseth was able to protect his lead over second-place Joey Logano during the restart and went on to win.

“In my opinion, the leader should always have the advantage,” said Kenseth, who starts 13th Sunday. “He has been leading the race, so the leader has earned that advantage. The second-place guy should never be able to jump in front of the first-place guy.”

The length of a restart zone is measured at each track as twice the pit road speed (for example, if pit road speed is 45 mph, the restart zone is 90 feet) and is marked on the wall. The race leader, technically, is supposed to accelerate inside this box, controlling the restart. The second-place car, technically, must wait for the first-place car to make that move.

“I probably ‘went’ a few feet before the mark,” Kenseth said of the Richmond restart ahead of second-place Joey Logano. “But I was right in the vicinity. It wasn’t like I jabbed the gas and went 20 car lengths ahead of everybody else.”

NASCAR officials have acknowledged that restart rules haven’t been strictly enforced and that they’re looking for solutions. The subject was raised at the drivers’ meeting before the race at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway in August. It’s a safe bet it will also be a topic of discussion during Sunday’s drivers’ meeting at Chicagoland.

Monitoring restarts electronically is likely, as early as next season, as are other possible alternatives.

“I think drivers want longer restart zones,” Denny Hamlin said. “Now it’s so short that if you don’t go right away, the second place guy does and knowing that he can beat the first place guy to the line there’s no repercussions for it. I think it would be better to open that zone up two, three times the size of it right now and then don’t let that second place guy beat the first one to the line.”

Whether the size of the restart area changes or not, what Edwards calls a “gray” area needs to be made more concrete.

“You’ve got to call it,” Jeff Gordon said. “If somebody deliberately jumps, you’ve got to call it. And it’s got to be a black and white decision.”

Said Logano: “Most of the time when someone jumps a start, Ray Charles can see it. It is usually blatant.”

Kenseth, however, takes it back to the leader’s point of view.

“You know when you get going, the leader has to take some liberties,” he said. “The other cars get rolling toward you and if you look around and that’s a huge disadvantage for the leader. As a driver, you have to do what you can do within the rules to make sure you get that win.”

Even if it’s not always exactly within the rules.

“All you’ve got to do is call somebody on it once that will fix the problem,” Clint Bowyer said. “Call them. Whether it’s me or anybody else. If you do that once I won’t do it again.”

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