Officiating for the NASCAR Cup Clash was a bit of a mess

It was just a non-points exhibition race but the Cup Series garage did not feel like the Cookout Clash was the finest hour from race control to those on the ground directly communicating with teams.

Walking through the garage, there were several crew chiefs and veteran crew members who felt like the Sanctioning Body needed to do some work over the next week to mend some fences between them.

One longtime crew member for a championship caliber team said NASCAR has lost the garage, referencing a narrative from the off-season, and that an event like this was reflective of why there is such a disconnect.

That crew member said officials on the ground at Bowman Gray Stadium on Wednesday night could not provide a straight answer to anything and that the decisions made were a direct conflict to what teams understood the rules to be.

It was best illustrated by Carson Hocevar and the Spire Motorsports No. 77 team. When NASCAR allowed teams to come back to the pit area to refuel, they also forced Hocevar back onto the wet weather tires they had taken off the caution before.

NASCAR rules require race control to state that the track is dry before teams can put slicks back on. They hadn’t done that yet but hadn’t caught the 77’s move until after the fact.

“Yeah, I ran like six laps on the dries and there was like, and I can’t really answer this, they said we couldn’t put dries on but someone else told us we could,” Hocevar said. “This guy said ‘no,’ but this guy up top in the tower said ‘yes’ so the tower or someone did.

“Like, there was a guy in front of me, I don’t know who, but they were telling us to ‘stop’ and then eventually he was like ‘okay, you can go ahead’ and then we resumed the race.’ I mean, there was a lot going on.

“At least they weren’t like ‘congrats, you ran on dries for six laps, so you’re six laps down now.’ Like, I just think it was a miscommunication of an already chaotic, probably, tower and I don’t want to know what those radios sounded like.”

The decision to even let teams come down and add fuel was one of the reasons several crew chiefs were mad in the first place. It only happened after the likes of Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson ran out of fuel.

In real time, James Small was furious because he had just told his driver, Chase Briscoe, that they had enough fuel to make it to the end even with all of the cautions. He budgeted the race to have enough caution laps to justify a full tank.

Small intended to beat the field in part on fuel mileage.

“I just don't understand that,” Small said. “Everybody knows the rules, everybody. If you started the race full, you had more than enough fuel to get to the end. So, yeah, I guess whatever.”

In real time, he called it ‘fucking bullshit,’ over the radio to Briscoe.

“It's like, why do we even have the rules,” Small said. “You know, even after the LCQ, I think they gave another car a set of tires that they said they were never going to give. So you know, it was just constantly chopping and changing and it was frustrating because I thought we could outlast on fuel a lot of the guys were racing against.

“We were going to be fine, so I guess, overall, lucky it doesn’t count for anything.”

Race winner Ryan Preece benefitted from that decision and crew chief Derrick Finley says he was lobbying NASCAR for it.

“We were pushing hard with the officials trying to get us to get some fuel, let us get fuel,” he said. “We felt that was a pretty extraordinary circumstance, to be out there in the rain and snow and spinning out and running all these caution laps that don't count.

“Apparently they agreed eventually. We came down.”

Finley conceded they ‘were going to be close’ and that he was ‘relieved and happy’ that NASCAR let them take fuel.

“I do feel bad for the people who just came down and got gas the caution before,” Finley said. “In fact, we were talking about doing it ourselves. Because we were leading, we didn't. Had we not been leading, we probably would have come down and fueled up and lost our position.”

Jim Pohlman, new crew chief for Kyle Busch and the Richard Childress Racing No. 8, was one of those teams.

“My only complaint was, we were probably short on fuel and I opted to come in,” Pohlman said. “One of those late runs, I stuck fuel in it just to be safe and they told me I couldn’t even do that.

“Then the next caution, they let everyone come down and put fuel in, and I knew that, I wouldn’t have put fuel in it and kept our track position. But you know what, I guess that’s the way it goes sometimes.”

When it came time to talk to Chris Gayle, crew chief of the JGR No. 11, he and Small were talking about it. The frustrations were shared.

“Yeah, that’s what we were just talking about,” Gayle said of his chat with Small. “As chaotic as it was on the track, with all the contact in the wet conditions, it was just as chaotic back here on pit lane because I wasn’t quite sure all of a sudden what the rules were and what was and wasn’t allowed. I don’t think many people did. That was unfortunate.”

Gayle said the teams and NASCAR have a channel to be able to have these conversations in the appropriate forums.

“For sure,” Gayle said. “All the stuff that happened will be brought up in the right way at the right time with the right people, and we’ll have those conversations.”

Cliff Daniels, crew chief for Larson, was bit by the fueling decision but was more diplomatic because their race was so much more problematic than that one specific officiating outcome.

“To be honest, our race was such a mess that I'm in no place to talk about the officiating at all,” Daniels said. “The one thing I will say is we have inches of snow on the ground here still, and I know the track crew, everybody, the speedway, everybody in NASCAR worked really, really hard to get this event in.

“So, I'm going to go ahead and give them a bunch of credit in that department because I think they deserve it in getting us here and communicating all the things they needed to for us to race under these circumstances. There was a lot of good there.”

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