The Damaged Vehicle Policy (DVP) is designed to keep severely damaged race cars off the track. Essentially, if a crashed race car cannot be driven under its own power, it is towed back to the garage and removed from competition. Unfortunately, that means that race cars with flat tires are often taken out of the race, as has been the case with two NASCAR Ford drivers over the past few weeks. It happened to Ryan Blaney at Watkins Glen and again to Josh Berry at Kansas just last weekend.
Berry was taken out of competition on the first lap of the Cup Series race when a multicar wreck resulted in his No. 4 NASCAR Ford Mustang Dark Horse spinning out and flattening all four tires. Berry had to be towed back to the garage, though the damage to his race car was likely reparable. NASCAR Cup Series Managing Director Brad Moran joined Sirius XM NASCAR Radio and explained the decision to haul Berry off the track after what appeared to be a relatively minor incident.
“The [DVP] rule hasn’t changed, but it certainly can give a different view when it happens and it’s unfortunate,” Moran said. “But the 4, the 16, 21, and 84 were all involved in a wreck on the backstretch. The hit was hard enough on the 4 to lift the car off the ground, slam it down on the ground. And by the way, the IDR [incident] recorder did go off. So it was a significant incident that the 4 was in.”
He added, “If he couldn’t drive that car back, it was out due to DVP [Damaged Vehicle Policy]. We don’t inspect it, obviously, on the site of the track. We haven’t got that ability. But the indicator is, you drive it back, you’re good.”
Moran explained that if officials had felt Berry’s wreck was minor, they would have allowed his team to make repairs and turn the No. 4 NASCAR Ford Mustang back out on track. Ultimately, though, NASCAR decided that it was better to remove a potentially unsafe vehicle from competition than to put its drivers at risk.
“If, however, he just spun and had four flat tires, he would have been towed to pit road under the flat tire recovery program,” Moran said. “But it’s really clear on our recovery program and our DVP that if you’re involved in an incident, you have to be able to get your vehicle back to pit road.”
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