The Hendrick Motorsports #48 worked on the car outside the pit stall
It happened yesterday in the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The pit crew missed a lug nut.
As Jimmie Johnson pulled out of his box, he was told to stop. He didn’t back up, instead, the crew hit the missed lug nut as Johnson hung outside the lines of his pit stall.
Watch the pitlane video below.
NASCAR senior vice president of competition, Scott Miller, explained the situation on ‘The Morning Drive’ via SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Scott Miller
“It’s funny that this has come up now because it’s high-profile now that the playoffs, we’ve been calling that particular thing consistently over the past couple of years with the lug nut,” Miller stated.
“The way we look at that one is they did their normal pit stop in the pit box. He left. They realized they had a lug nut and at that point to us it becomes a safety issue and allowing them to put the lug nut on. The penalty becomes they lost probably 10 or 12 spots during that pit stop. That’s a penalty.
“We let them do that because we want to make sure that it’s a safe situation out there on the race track. That’s the way we’ve been calling it. We like to give the teams the benefit of the doubt if we can, especially when it comes to something that might create an unsafe situation.”
“That’s the basis for that call. It’s interesting that it’s so high on everybody’s list today when we’ve been calling it for a couple of years now,” Miller concluded.
It’s simply, Hendrick Motorsports having a complete understanding of the NASCAR rulebook.
Jimmie Johnson pit road video
Charlotte Motor Speedway
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