While crew chief Chad Knaus will not get a look at the car that Hendrick Motorsports built for Darlington Raceway until he gets to the track this morning, a few hours before the race, Kurt Busch has sat in his Chip Ganassi Racing car and met with his crew chief.
Today’s return to racing for NASCAR has brought with it a set of safety protocols that are to be strictly enforced at the track when the Cup Series goes racing for the first time in more than two months, after a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The stock car series can only trust competitors to follow the guidelines away from the track — and teams appear to have different interpretations of the rules.
Photo: AP
“No face-to-face or contact with these guys whatsoever. Everything has been on [Zoom] team meetings,” said Knaus, a seven-time championship winning crew chief. “That’s the recommendation by NASCAR for the traveling teams to stay as isolated as they can and try to keep everybody at the race track as healthy as we can. That’s the protocol we put into place and that’s what we’ve been abiding by.”
Not others — Busch dropped by the Ganassi shop on Thursday.
He wanted a face-to-face meeting with crew chief Matt McCall before Darlington, after two months of communicating by telephone or computer.
“Just him and I, separated from the group,” Busch said. “There’s a shift change where the shop is empty for an hour, so it will be just him and I following [social] distancing.”
Xfinity Series driver Ryan Sieg posted a video of a visit by an Atlanta news station to his Georgia-based team on Thursday showing three crew members standing next to each other — none wore a mask or other protective equipment.
NASCAR reiterated its guidelines when asked for clarification.
“For a team to submit a participant to a roster, they must be symptom free for five days and not have been directly exposed to anyone with COVID-19,” NASCAR said. “We have made strong recommendations about operations in shops and responsible travel to the event.”
Teams today are limited to 16 employees per car, including the driver, spotter and owner.
More than half of the team owners at the Cup Series level are older than 65 and are not expected to attend, because they are considered to have a higher risk for the coronavirus.
Drivers were told to be at the track four hours ahead of the green flag today.
They are to undergo a heath check including a temperature check, but no COVID-19 testing — a decision reached to ensure that tests go elsehwere, not to NASCAR.
The timing allows a backup driver to make the two-hour trip from the Charlotte area to Darlington, if needed.
Once inside, drivers are to be isolated in their motorhomes, away from their team, and wait to be called to the cars.
Everyone is required to wear a mask, and crews must maintain social distancing — high-fives, hugs and human contact are barred.
NASCAR has warned of fines as high as US$50,000 for not following the rules at the track, where competitors are subject to random health screenings.
NASCAR has recommended that anyone who travels to the track not return to their shop and not interact with other groups.
This is designed to help NASCAR trace contacts if someone ends up testing positive for the virus.
NASCAR cannot afford a misstep as it starts up its three series, with 20 races scheduled through June, all in southern states and all without spectators.
“We all want to be back. We all want to be back in a way that’s safe, so if we can share and learn from each other, I think that’s what we’ve done,” NASCAR executive Steve O’Donnell told NBC Sports.
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