With the tire incident, DJ is right. Normally teams will help each other out. I’ve certainly knocked down a loose tire before for a team pitted in front or behind my own, and I’ve seen guys do it for my team. But in this case that didn’t happen. Even with a few witnesses, I think it’s difficult to prove that a crew guy from the 98 did anything malicious. Without video, its a he-said, she-said situation. In any case, if the 47 crew had done things right, that tire would have been collected properly and this wouldn’t have ever been an issue. I know that sometimes tires have a mind of their own, but it’s still the job of the pit crew and the guys behind the wall to secure those tires.

I didn’t read carefully enough to understand that the spacers were intended to cover the damaged threads. I need to pay closer attention! But even at that, doesn’t that mean there’s less of the stud for the lug to hold on to?

I hope you had a chance to see your colleague, D.J. Copp, talk about the loose tire on Monday’s “NASCAR Now.” D. J. Copp and Jimmy Watts both work on the 47 pit crew team, and so D.J. had the cat-bird seat. There’s video of his report (“Runaway Tire”) on ESPN,com http://espn.go.com/racing/nascar/ but you have to use the arrows to sort through the video clips to find it. He said the whole incident began because Marcos stopped short and the rear of the 47 car was over the line into the 98′s pit behind them. D.J. said usually teams will be neighborly, but he diplomatically said there were issues between the two teams.

He said there were witnesses who saw someone from the 98 team (Paul Menard drives the 98) was seen using two hands to push the tire away from the pit wall (it was within the 47′s pit box), apparently to show his displeasure because Ambrose infringed on the 98′s territory.

What do you think of Copp’s account of the incident itself, and do you think the jerk from the 98 team should lose his hard card for a few races?

West Coast Kenny
Alameda, California

Lauren – if there was not way to gain anything back after going 2 laps down, how did Stewart do that very thing? I have raceview so I didn’t have to rely on the tv broadcast, and saw a lot of good racing going on away from the very front.

I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody called out on the radio to grab the tire, but as far out as it was, at that point it was too late.

If a tire from your car gets away, and ends up in another pit stall, there is no rule that says that team has to knock it down. You’d like to hope they would help you out, but they won’t allow your tire to screw up their stop. In any case, pushing it out to pit road seems a little ridiculous.

With the stud issue, in terms of the time it takes to actually install a single lugnut, we are talking about fractions of a second difference. But with 5 lugs per side, it adds up, and can add several tenths to a stop.

If you can rectify the problem of damaged studs with a spacer, I don’ t know why NASCAR wouldn’t allow it. It’s more of a danger to have a car driving around the track at speed with a wheel that could fall off. And teams use spacers all the time to get proper treadwidths. Spacers are installed behind the wheel, not over them. Adding spacers will certainly add time to a pit stop, but don’t you think its better to add time to the stop and fix the problem, then to have a fast stop and then have a wheel fall off and ruin your race and possibly somebody else’s?

Where on pit lane can a crew member go without incurring a penalty? Could Jimmy Watts have waited for permission from a NASCAR official and then retrieved the tire without penalty?

On tonight’s “NASCAR Now,” another member of the 47 crew, rear tire changer D.J. Copp said he heard “Get that tire” in his headset. He also said, by the way, that a crew member of the neighboring pit actually pushed the tire back away from pit wall, since that competitor didn’t like having someone else’s tire in their area. That sounds like very poor sportsmanship, and not very neighborly.

T.C., could you go into a bit more detail about the length of the tire studs and spacers? How much longer does it take to install a lug nut with the new longer stud as opposed to the shorter ones used last season?

Why would NASCAR permit the use of spacers anyway? It seems to me using a spacer would prevent the lug nut from getting the full tight grip on the stud. Isn’t this a safety issue? Are the spacers glued onto the tire rim between the rim and the lug nut? If using a spacer adds time to a pit stop, why use them at all?

Sorry for all the questions, I’m just a curious guy!

West Coast Kenny
Alameda, California

I watched the replay and it looks like the tire was starting to slow down. Would NASCAR have thrown the caution if the tire came to a stop? Who knows. I could see the officials letting it sit there until the cycle was complete. But if they did, and someone spun out coming out of 4, the tire could have become a projectile heading towards the crew members on pit road.

This isn’t the first time a yellow has come out during green flag stops, and it won’t be the last. The only difference is that now there is one person to blame. But if we are blaming people, shouldn’t Jeff Gordon be blamed for the yellow flag in the middle of green flag stops at Vegas?

It is up to the teams to finish the best they can. There were plenty of teams that were caught a lap down. Look at the #14 team. Due to some strategy, a mistake, luck, and good team work, they came back to finish 8th.

I decided to write about it here, because I knew people were going to be interested in it. We will talk about it for a few days, and then we will move on. Thankfully for Jimmy and everyone in the race, no harm was done.