Jason Ratcliff is the crew chief on the #20 car
Matt Kenseth was disqualified at Kansas Speedway on Sunday. The team had 7 guys over the wall to work on the car on the 5 min crash clock.
In a crash clock situation, the penalty for the 7th guy over the wall moves to automatic disqualification.
Listen to the audio below.
Jason Ratcliff
“I think everyone knew the rule, it just came down to some miscues,” Ratcliff tells Sirius XM NASCAR Radio.
“Immediately, I made a mistake and said, ‘7 guys’ then fortunately I was corrected. Thankfully, before the car got to the pit stall I said, ‘6 guys’ ”
Related: In-car audio during Kenseth disqualification
“I mean, you can actually have 7. But, the way that we set it up at the start of the year was, ‘Hey, lets don’t bring that 7th guy over there.’ Because all he can do is a tearoff and get maybe a bottle of water to the driver. It can just be too complicated.”
we need better communication.
-Jason Ratcliff
“Even though you can have him over there, he cannot work on the car. But, when you get in the heat of the battle like that and we have the first pit stall on pit road, so things happen really quick. It came down to, we need better communication.”
“Guys know the rule, but everyone wanted to go out there and do their part. In the heat of the battle, we had too many guys over there.”
“We’re not the first time that got into this situation this season. I think when you look at it, they need to make some adjustments to it. I don’t think teams should be eliminated. Especially, from a championship.”
I don’t think you should be eliminated from the race
-Jason Ratcliff
“I don’t think you should be eliminated from the race because you had too many guys over the wall. But, I do understand that there needs to be a rule there.”
What would you change?
“It could be, for every extra guy they have over the wall, reduce the time they have on the clock.”
“You just get into a situation where you don’t have the same group of guys going over the wall to repair the car, that you do that go over the wall every time the car comes to the pit box to change tires and fuel it.”
“You have to reduce the guys that do the typical pit stops to send guys over to do repairs. It’s different for each team. That one bit us. We’ll have to look at it and make adjustments so it doesn’t happen again.”
“But, I think, on NASCAR’s end they need to definitely look at it and make some changes as well.”
Matt Kenseth was eliminated from the 2017 NASCAR Playoffs following the incident at Kansas Speedway.
