Periodically, following races in the NASCAR Cup Series, officials will select two to three cars to take back to its R&D Center for additional inspection.
Historically, this is called the Random Inspection, but despite its name, there is a model and method to which cars the Sanctioning Body wants to look at over the course of the season. To a lesser extent, NASCAR takes cars from the Xfinity Series and Truck Series too, but random isn’t exactly the right word for it.
It’s random to those teams having their cars confiscated for a few days but not to the Sanctioning Body — at least these days.
Mike Forde, NASCAR managing director for racing communications, discussed that process on Wednesday on the latest episode of his officially sanctioned Hauler Talk podcast.
“How we kind of pick those cars, if you will, you know, fans hear the word ‘random’ and think that we have a pill bucket and we pull it out and whoever finishes, and we pull out 19 and whoever finished 19th knows that they’re coming home with us,” Forde began. “That is not how we do it.”
Again, it’s random to the teams but not to NASCAR, which intends to look at every car over the course of the season to ensure parity and compliance.
“It’s random in that the garage doesn’t know what’s coming,” Forde said. “The randomness isn’t a pull it out of the hat, and that’s who is coming home with us. What we try to do is pick a selection, we obviously keep track of all this, we have a grid, and try to pick the, spread it out through all the teams.
“So, by all the teams, not just Hendrick and Roush and Penske and JGR, which is the case, but have all five, all four Hendrick cars come home. Have all three Penske cars come home throughout the season. And have different OEMs as well. So very rarely will you see two Toyotas come back or two Chevys or two Fords. This week we had a Ford and a Toyota on the Cup side come home. So, that’s kind of how we look at it. When we do it is also mildly random.”
All told, it’s NASCAR’s way of showing teams that they could look for things to penalize at any time over the course of the season, even if a car did not run particularly well, so always be compliant with rules and regulations.
However, there is a history of truly random selections as Forde detailed it.
“When Wayne Auton, the famous, legendary, iconic Wayne Auton, was the series director of the Xfinity Series, he did do it that way,” Forde said. “Years ago. Towards the end of his tenure as the series director, he did not do it that way. And Brad Moran [Cup Series managing director] doesn’t do it this way, and Seth Kramlich in the Truck Series doesn’t do it this way.”
