TALLADEGA, Ala. — NASCAR’s show-and-tell returned on Friday at Talladega Superspeedway, with Jesse Love’s No. 2 Chevrolet rear suspension from Rockingham Speedway last weekend on display.
Eric Peterson, managing director of the Xfinity Series, stood the No. 2 car’s left-side truck arm, the rear-end housing, the U-Bolt saddle and the lowering block. The rule violated at Rockingham was that all the mating surfaces between the U-Bolt saddle and the truck trailing arm were not in complete contact with each other. A significant gap was visible.
With the entire assembly not being tightened, Love had an aerodynamic advantage that eventual Rockingham winner Sammy Smith pointed out from the No. 8 team’s radio toward the end of the event.
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“What happens when you go into the corner and all this stuff is not tight is the load on the suspension moves left,” Peterson said, “and the cornering load moves right with the body and will move the right rear of the body towards the wall and adds side force to the car which is where the performance advantage comes from. It skews it out.”
After each race, the top two cars in the finishing order are inspected, along with a random car. The evaluation involves putting the car on jack stands where a feeler gauge (measuring the gap between two surfaces) is entered. If the feeler gauge goes through, NASCAR digs deeper into the issue. Before the race, the rear assembly is visually checked.
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Peterson said this was the newest violation that he’s seen after inspecting more than 600 cars since joining NASCAR in 2019. He admitted that the issue could have occurred during the 256-lapper that saw 14 cautions.
“I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily intentional,” Peterson said. “It’s hard to judge whether it was or wasn’t with this one. It came back this way, and certainly there are things you could do to make things like this happen — I’m not saying this happened in this case. It was swayed and an aero advantage.”
Love was credited with a 37th-place finish at Rockingham. Justin Bonsignore was also disqualified for having more than two missing lug nuts.