NASCAR admits officiating mistake in penalizing Edwards in Nationwide race

NASCAR admitted it mistakenly penalized Carl Edwards in Friday night’s Nationwide race, but that no scoring fix was needed.

With about 35 laps to go, Edwards ran out of fuel and came to the pits. After refueling, he took off and then the car stalled. His team pushed his car back _ but not all the way back to its pit stall _ when a crew member sprayed starter fluid into the engine to help it start again.

NASCAR penalized Edwards for the crew’s action.

“The penalty was for having service work done out of the box,’’ said Joe Balash, Nationwide Series director. “Basically if you’re in stall 10 you get three pit stalls to push your car before you have to pull it back. At the same time you get use the starter fluid to get the car started. That’s not considered servicing outside the box.’

 “What happened with Carl’s car which was a little different, his car started and he drove off and then the car stalled. Well the car stalled. The pit crew went to pull the car back to the box, which they can do, but then they stopped and were servicing the car out there. So that’s when we made the call about pitting out of the box. Our rule is, you can't push past the end of pit road, which is considered where the yellow line is out there.

“We went back and reviewed that, really we need to give the teams the benefit of the doubt to have that distance off the end of pit road.’’

 “Looking at the scoring results, it wouldn’t have changed his position. If he would have gotten a lap back, he would have been in the same position. It wouldn’t have affected anything there.’’

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