NASCAR has rescinded the disqualification to Ryan Blaney and his car, the sanctioning body announced Monday night. The move enhances Blaney’s chances of reaching next month’s championship race.
“After further review of the inspection process throughout this weekend’s events at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, NASCAR has rescinded the No. 12 disqualification penalty,” the sanctioning body said in a statement.
“Monday morning during its race weekend debrief, NASCAR discovered an issue with the damper template used for inspection.
“NASCAR then conducted a detailed investigation, and has restored the No. 12’s stage and race finishing positions from Sunday.
“NASCAR has taken internal steps to remedy this issue moving forward.”
Team Penske issued a statement Monday night: “We are pleased with the decision by NASCAR to rescind the post-race disqualification to the No. 12 car following Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. NASCAR has shown a tremendous amount of integrity throughout the process which has led to this conclusion. We are proud of the effort and the results by the No. 12 team during the 2023 season. We look forward to continuing the pursuit of the NASCAR Cup Series Championship.”
Blaney will be scored with his original sixth-place finish and 39 points, including eight stage points. Blaney is now 17 points from the cutline. He moves to seventh in the playoff standings. Blaney had been 56 points from the cutline and in a must-win situation.
Blaney moves ahead of Chris Buescher in the playoff standings. Buescher is 23 points from the cutline.
Brad Moran, Cup Series managing director, said Monday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that the left front shock of Blaney’s car was found to be short, leading to the disqualification.
“I guess 12 hours later or a little more, we got a little bit of information,” Moran said on Sirius. “We brought all the shocks back. We brought the damper template back and we brought all the tools back. We started going through all of our weekend reports, doing our due diligence to make sure that there was nothing missed.
“Unfortunately, something came up. One thing led to another and as we did all of our due diligence and dug into all the details ... we realized that the damper plate at some point was not consistent throughout the entire weekend, which is obviously on us.”
Moran also said on Sirius: “We’ll own what we have to do. The teams step up during the playoffs. We need to do the same.”
Moran said NASCAR disassembled the shock to make sure that there were no issues with the piece of equipment.
Moran said on Sirius that NASCAR would be implementing new procedures to ensure this episode is not repeated.