Christopher Bell and Adam Stevens showed poise last Sunday at Las Vegas when Bell left pit road with no lugnut on his front left and Stevens instructed him to find a pit box of a teammate to tighten it.
Bell darted by other cars on pit road when he saw that teammate Chase Briscoe’s pit wasn't occupied. He drove in and one of Briscoe's crew members secured a lugnut on the front left.
He was penalized for pitting outside his pit box and sent to the rear of the field for the restart, which would be the same penalty he would have had if the wheel came off on pit road.
But if the wheel came off once Bell left pit road, he would have been given a two-lap penalty and he would have lost the tire changer and the jackman for the next two races.
The move was within the rules. Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota had asked NASCAR officials about the move, and it was apparently in their playbook for more than a year.
But everything has to work for the move to occur.
A driver must be pitting far enough up pit road that the driver on the way down pit road can find a box of a team willing to tighten the lugnut. That would most likely be a teammate, although many teams lease a crew from a bigger organization, so those possibly could be options.
The applicable rules state:
— A driver must pit in the driver's assigned pit box (the penalty for not doing so is tail end of the longest line under yellow, a drive through under green).
— A driver can’t impede another team’s pit (so a driver can’t drive in a box of a team that is getting ready to pit its own car).
— A team in an adjacent pit box can’t purposely help another team. This rule is in place so teams don’t work together when rolling tires to use each other’s pit crews for help.
— Under
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