Young driver Gio Ruggiero has revealed that NASCAR apologized to him on Friday for a mistaken penalty call in the Truck Series race at Watkins Glen.
Ruggiero was pinged at a late-race restart for a restart line violation, sending him to the back of the field, but replays showed that he was actually shoved forward by Brenden Queen rather than hitting the gas pedal too soon.
Ruggiero told Frontstretch after the race that he and his team were 'apologized to' for the bad call, although that won't give the 19-year-old back his chance for a first win of the year.
Ross Chastain had been penalized a few laps previous for a (legitimate) restart violation, with Connor Zilisch admitting after the race that there was some confusion about other, non-restart lines on the track which he said he would push to be cleared up.
"There’s timing lines or something across the track that look like restart lines," he said, "and the restart lines are not very clear at all. I’ll text the driver chat and say that we need to change that going into tomorrow."
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Ruggiero responds to NASCAR mistake
Ruggiero gave a remarkably mature response to his own misfortune, saying: “I think it was just a bad call, obviously. I didn’t jump the restart.
“I think we just gave the No. 11 team (Kaden Honeycutt) a nice gift there. We definitely would’ve won the race or had a close battle with the No. 71 (Zilisch). Just really happy with the fact that we were going to be on the front row for the final two restarts of the last two weeks and to be in contention to win. …
“Really unfortunate from a points standpoint and everything in general. Everybody on this team just works really hard and puts all their time and dedication into this to have that happen.”
After saying 'we were just apologized to', he added: "It was a bad call, like I said. But there’s really nothing [NASCAR] can do about it now. So it’s unfortunate, but got to focus forward and on to Dover.”
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