NASCAR will look at limiting contact with suspended crew members

Steve O'Donnell

NASCAR will examine if there is more it can do to limit the contact suspended individuals, particularly crew chiefs, have with their teams on race weekends. Steve O'Donnell, NASCAR's chief racing development officer, said Monday on "The Morning Drive" that even if the sanctioning body barred suspended crew chiefs from having contact with their team at the track, it would be "very difficult to police."

The question was asked on the SiriusXM NASCAR Radio show after Martin Truex Jr. stated last week that his team would stay in touch with suspended crew chief Cole Pearn via FaceTime, chat and other electronic means last weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.

"The old policy of 'You're suspended, and you can't be there' has probably served its time," O'Donnell said. "As we go forward now, obviously we never want to have to suspend someone, we're going to have look at the technology. It's very difficult to police, but you could have almost a no-contact rule. That would be hard to police, but we could put that in place. It is something we're looking at. We wanted to see how Phoenix went, and we'll kind of evaluate what teams are doing with all the technologies that they have in place and see what we can and can't monitor on a fair manner and go from there. A suspension should be that. It shouldn't allow someone just to crew chief a car from a different location." NBC Sports