The 2025 NASCAR season is officially three weeks old and each of the three race weekends has featured confusion about NASCAR’s officiating.
The latest episode came Sunday during the Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas won by Christopher Bell. During the first half of the race, many teams were confused why NASCAR was not enforcing track limits in Turn 6. The sanctioning body was telling drivers that they couldn’t cut Turns 3, 4 and 5, in the esses yet Turn 6 was apparently fair game to cut despite being in the same part of the track.
On SiriusXM Tuesday morning, Cup Series managing director Brad Moran said the sanctioning body would be clearer in its directives to teams and that no one had questioned its communication before the race.
Moran said that NASCAR confirmed to teams that there were no penalties for shortcutting Turn 6 — consistent from what Moran said how NASCAR had officiated it the whole weekend.
"From that point on, it played out well, but, obviously, there was some confusion because we had a lot of teams that had no questions, and I think we had a few teams that had questions and that's our responsibility to make sure that all the competitors understand. So, going back, we will not make that error again. We will make sure that everybody totally understands.
"But a lot of changes took place from Thursday, Friday, very close to the race. We dealt with it as quick as we could. And I guess the broadcast, as well, was on the same page as a few of the teams. Got that corrected, carried on and had a great event. But again our responsibility. We'll make sure that doesn't happen again."
It’s unclear why NASCAR would tell drivers that they couldn’t drive below the inside curbing in just specific sections of the race track. A much more consistent and stringent philosophy would to prevent drivers from cutting any corner on the track. The yellow lines at Daytona are enforced the entire way around the track and not only in certain sections of the 2.5-mile oval.
It would behoove NASCAR to have a race weekend at Phoenix on Saturday and Sunday without any officiating issues given what’s taken place so far this season. The Daytona 500 ended under green despite a last-lap crash because NASCAR officials admitted they threw the caution too early because of a last-lap crash during one of the qualifying races for the event.
The following weekend at Atlanta, the Xfinity Series race finished under green despite a big last-lap crash on the backstretch. The following day, the Cup Series race ended under caution with the leaders in Turn 3 because of a crash on the backstretch on the final lap. That caution came after Cup Series drivers implored NASCAR to throw a caution for a final-lap crash like what happened during the Xfinity Series race.
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