NASCAR Does Away With Driver-Adjustable Track Bars as Part of 2019 Rules Package

NASCAR continues attempts to improve racing through rules changes.

byAmanda Vincent|
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NASCAR will do away with its driver-adjustable track bar after the 2018 season, NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Scott Miller said on Monday’s edition of The Morning Drive show on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

  

“Many [drivers] came to us and said, ‘Hey, look, this really didn’t do what we hoped for, and we’d rather not have it.’ Part of the 2019 rules is that the cockpit-adjustable track bar is no longer in play,”?Miller said.

NASCAR teams went to driver-adjustable track bars in 2015, giving drivers some power in changing their cars’ balance. Previously, only pit crews were able to adjust track bars pre-race or during pit stops.

NASCAR at Las Vegas

, Joey Logano [22] and Erik Jones [20] on track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sept. 16, 2018., Getty Images for NASCAR

Joey Logano’s crew chief Todd Gordon was also on The Morning Drive Monday and said taking track bar changes out of the drivers’ hands would be good for racing.

“It’s going to be complex for us as crew chiefs and crews,” Gordon said. "If you go back to before we had the driver-adjustable track bar, the track bar was another adjustment. You could put wedge in with either one of the jack bolts in the rear window or you could run the track bar up and down with an adjuster there. We’ll have to go back to doing that, but we’re doing that with one less pit crew guy than we used to. It will be interesting to see how that happens.”

“Right now, if I miss an adjustment or I went the wrong way on a wedge adjustment, the driver has the ability with a button to find his balance back with the driver-adjustable track bar,” Gordon continued. “Next year, we won’t be able to do that, and the drivers are going to have to hang on with a car that is not perfectly handling until we get another shot at working on it.”

According to Joe Gibbs Racing driver Erik Jones, the move will result in more position changes during races than when drivers had the ability to make the adjustment remotely. This can be attributed to the varying car setups which often shift over the course of a race due to factors such as track conditions.

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