NASCAR confirms driver penalty change ahead of Charlotte

NASCAR Senior Director of Racing Communications, Amanda Ellis, has confirmed that the sport will make changes to one of its penalty rules heading into this weekend's racing at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The rule change will specifically affect the Truck Series and revolves around pre-race inspection failures, with drivers previously having their practice time deducted if their car failed technical inspection in multiple consecutive events.

For example, if you had failed in two consecutive weeks, you lost 10 minutes. If it were three weeks, you would have lost 20 minutes. Four failures at consecutive events would have led to a driver losing their entire practice session.

However, after five drivers missed chunks of practice at Dover Motor Speedway last weekend, including rookie Dystany Spurlock, NASCAR has decided to amend the rules moving forward.

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NASCAR changes practice penalty rule

“What was happening was just an unintended consequence,” Ellis said on this week's edition of the Hauler Talk podcast.

"The reasoning for those penalties was needed, and some structure and boundaries were put into place in the Truck Series around tech for all good reasons.

"But what was happening was you would potentially have a rookie driver who was getting practice time cut because of these penalties.”

Ellis continued: “So, there’s still going to be something in place to encourage you to be prepared for tech and do the things that you need to do for that process.

"But ultimately we’ve decided to go away from the practice penalties and use what we’ve been using in Cup as a guide for the Truck series garage.”

The rules now mean that teams with inspection failures in three consecutive races will be moved to the rear of the tech line for the next race as their punishment, bringing things in line with the Cup Series.

Crucially, this means that drivers will get their much-needed time out on track, particularly useful if you are a rookie or a driver new to the series.