NASCAR will disqualify any vehicle that breaks the rules this season, including race-winning cars.
According to NASCAR chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell, the racing series will no longer allow vehicles that don’t pass inspections to retain their results post-race.
“If you are illegal, you don’t win the race. We cannot allow inspection and penalties to continue to be a prolonged story line. Race vehicles are expected to adhere to the rule book from the opening of the garage to the checkered flag,” O’Donnell told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Traditionally, NASCAR hasn’t disqualified cheating vehicles from competing. Instead, it has simply docked points, fined teams or suspended crew members when a car fails an inspection at the conclusion of the race.
From 2019 onwards, inspections will be carried out at the track immediately after the races in a process that’s expected to take about 90 minutes. If the winning team’s vehicle fails inspection, it will be stripped of the victory.
In other news, NASCAR has announced that it will unveil its seventh-generation racer in February 2021, with the new-age engines set to premiere in 2022 at the earliest.
Few details are known about the next-generation NASCAR cars, but the series’ vice president of innovation and racing development, John Probst, told Autoweek that the cars will utilize lightweight bodies constructed from composite materials rather than steel.
NASCAR has been using the current bodies since the 2013 season.