The 2025 NASCAR season is now in its third week, and once again, there have been issues with NASCAR’s officiating at each race weekend. The most recent incident occurred during the Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas, where Christopher Bell emerged as the winner.
Teams were left puzzled during the first half of the race as NASCAR seemed to be inconsistent in enforcing track limits. While drivers were warned not to cut Turns 3, 4, and 5 in the esses, Turn 6 appeared to be fair game for cutting, despite being in the same section of the track.
During an interview on SiriusXM on Tuesday morning, Cup Series managing director Brad Moran acknowledged the confusion and stated that NASCAR would work on improving communication with teams to avoid similar issues in the future.
Moran confirmed that NASCAR had informed teams that there would be no penalties for shortcutting Turn 6, maintaining consistency with their officiating throughout the weekend.
“From that point on, it played out well, but, obviously, there was some confusion because we had a lot of teams that had no questions, and I think we had a few teams that had questions and that’s our responsibility to make sure that all the competitors understand. So, going back, we will not make that error again. We will make sure that everybody totally understands.
“But a lot of changes took place from Thursday, Friday, very close to the race. We dealt with it as quick as we could. And I guess the broadcast, as well, was on the same page as a few of the teams. Got that corrected, carried on and had a great event. But again our responsibility. We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
It remains unclear why NASCAR had different rules for different sections of the track, rather than enforcing a consistent approach to corner-cutting. A uniform policy, like the yellow lines at Daytona, would help avoid confusion among drivers.
As NASCAR heads to Phoenix for the upcoming race weekend, fans and teams will be hoping for smoother officiating after the events of the previous races this season. From the Daytona 500 to the races at Atlanta, there have been incidents that have raised questions about NASCAR’s officiating standards.