Photo Credit: Sean Gardner/Getty Images
After a weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway saw many loose wheels, Stewart-Haas owner and driver Tony Stewart spoke about the ramifications of NASCAR that stopped teams to be required to put all five lugnuts on the wheels.
“I guarantee you that envelope is going to keep getting pushed until somebody gets hurt,” he said at a recent Mobil 1 appearance. “You will not have heard a rant that’s going to be as bad as what’s going to come out of my mouth if a driver gets hurt because of a loose wheel that hurts one of them.”
This was done last season as part of NASCAR new pit road technology initiative that saw officiating force being reduced with officials no longer being required to be in every pit stall. NASCAR switched to a video system to monitor the happenings of pit road, with cameras and sensors monitoring each stall and the infractions. Lugnuts wasn’t something that could be monitored from a distance, so NASCAR removed the rule.
“Last year it started; this year you see the problem getting worse,” he said. “Well if you see a problem getting worse like that, where’s the bottom of that trend going to happen? It’s going to happen when somebody gets hurt, and that’s going to be one of the largest black eyes I can see NASCAR getting when they’ve worked so hard and done such a good job to make it safe.”
With this new rule, more teams have been pushing the limit with the lugnuts and only tightening three or four instead of all five.
“We shouldn’t be playing games with safety to win races,” he said. “It should be out-performing the other teams, not jeopardizing drivers’ lives by teams putting two lug nuts one to try to get two more spots off pit road.”
The Indiana native would like to see NASCAR return to the rule “you must have five lug nuts secure” or a new mandated hub that only has one center lug nut (like open wheel cars run), or even three .
“We didn’t make the change to begin with,” he said. “It’s not our responsibility. That’s their responsibility. We did it for how many years in the sport – 50-plus years? 60-plus years? And now in the last two years now we don’t have that.”
