NASCAR lengthens restart zones for Dover
The restart zone at Dover will be twice the size it was previously scheduled to be.
NASCAR said Thursday that the restart zone would be 140 feet instead of 70 feet. The lengthening comes a week after Brad Keselowski was penalized for jumping a restart at New Hampshire. Keselowski, who restarted in second alongside race leader Greg Biffle, was the first car to the start/finish line. Keselowski was disciplined with a pass-through penalty on pit road.
Keselowski’s penalty came after NASCAR had threatened to treat restarts differently than it had all season. The sanctioning body had been incredibly lenient when it comes to the games that drivers play on restarts throughout the 2015 season. While it’s understandable that the sanctioning body wanted to crack down on the games in the Chase, it should never have allowed the restart shenanigans to get to the point where restarts were the dominant topic at the Chase media day.
In a perfect world, the longer restart zone gives the leader more of an opportunity to choose when he restarts the race. The zone is placed at the exit of turn four and the leader, when the race is about to go green after a caution flag, has control of the restart. Instead of starting the race via the starter in the flagstand and when he waives the green flag, the leader has the opportunity to start the race by being the first to accelerate.
With a longer restart zone, the second-place car has twice as long to anticipate the start and the leader would theoretically have a greater advantage. The restart zones will be lengthened for the rest of the 2015 races too.
Will it work? We’ll find out, though it may not be this weekend. With the possible track of Hurricane Joaquin and a storm system heading towards Dover for the weekend, Sunday’s race may be in jeopardy. NASCAR has not made any official and public contingency plans for the race and is likely hoping Joaquin heads out to sea and there’s enough of a break in the weather to run the race.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
