It’s only the fourth week into the 2025 Cup Series season, and NASCAR is again at the center of a controversy. It started with the inconsistency in enforcing the green-white-checkered flag rule in the first two races. In COTA – the season’s first road course – it was about NASCAR’s supposedly flawed plans for policing track limit violations. NASCAR expert Jordan Bianchi recently shared his thoughts on the original plan to control the track limits.
Compared to other motorsports vehicles, such as F1 cars, stock cars often take a wider line at corner exits on road courses to optimize their entry and exit speeds. However, to prevent corners from becoming straightaway, a limit must be placed on how much corner cutting is allowed. Ahead of the race, NASCAR announced that the center esses would be monitored with cameras for policing track limits.
However, it was not the original plan they came up with. In a recent episode of The Teardown podcast, experts Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi spoke about how the track limits situation unfolded at COTA. Gluck explained (1:45 onwards):
“It’s important to note the original plan was to put like some big 400-pound barriers in the esses, right? And the drivers on their track walk on Friday, walked the track and they went to NASCAR and they’re like, ‘Oh, this is not gonna be good.'”
Jordan Bianchi agreed with the sentiments of the drivers, sharing that he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of putting massive barriers on the track. According to Bianchi, the flaw of the original plan stems from the fact that the cars carry a lot of speed through the esses and any mistakes from the drivers could have sent them straight into the massive barriers, which wouldn’t have been good from a safety perspective.
“That never made sense to me,” Bianchi noted. “Like I saw the photos of it and I was like there’s no way. Someone’s going to get like literally hip checked into those and it’s going to be just a cluster bleed. It’s one of those things where I was like, ‘Really did we think this thing through.'”
Eventually, there was no clear communication from the governing body on how the track limit violations would be monitored on Sunday, February 2.
Miscommunication from NASCAR left drivers confused at COTA
With the plan of putting barriers around the esses scratched after the drivers’ meeting, NASCAR decided to switch to the old way of policing track limits. It initially told drivers that the center esses would be monitored by cameras but didn’t say which turns would be monitored.
Things quickly went downhill when Shane van Gisbergen, who was leading the race in the first stage, made a massive cut at turn 6. Kyle Busch, following SVG, came over on his in-car team radio to ask whether cutting turn 6 was allowed.
The team asked him not to do so while they were contacting NASCAR for further clarification. During the stage caution, the Richard Childress Racing driver was told on the radio that only turns 3, 4, and 5 were being policed and that he was free to cut turn 6. Kyle Busch looked understandably frustrated with the situation after the race and said that the officials didn’t have a clue as to what they were doing.
“I heard they were gonna police turns 4, 5, and 6. And then it turned into 3, 4, 5. And yesterday it was only 4 and 5. So, they ain’t got a clue,” Busch said during his post-race interviews.
Fourth-place man Chase Elliott and race winner Christopher Bell also spoke (via Athlon Sports) about being confused with the track limits situation after the race.
“I don’t know. We’re always confused. We just stay confused. We live confused. I do,” Elliott remarked.
“There was a lot of confusion,” Bell shared. “Well, I was watching the Xfinity race yesterday and I saw several guys cut Turn 6 and not get penalties. And I’m like, man, that’s really weird, really weird. And then early in the race I saw several competitors in front of me cut Turn 6 and break the rule.”
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver noted that after it was confirmed that turn 6 was not being policed for track limits, more and more drivers started cutting the corner, and it changed the way the race panned out.
Edited by Samya Majumdar