What’s The Deal With All These Loose Wheels?

Wheels flying off cars during a stock car race… nobody wants to see that. Not fans. Not teams. And certainly not the drivers who might be left to think “Was that my wheel?” as they watch one bounce helplessly up the road. NASCAR, however, can’t deny that they have a loose wheel epidemic on their hands, and it’s getting serious.

Seriously, we’re eleven races into the season and it seems like nearly every single NASCAR event has been plagued by the same issue. Cars come down pit road. Crews change the tires and fuel up the cars. Everyone takes off. Usually, that’s the end of it. This year though, every so often, a rogue tire is seen rolling toward turn one after a busy round of pit stops. Not ideal. It even happened twice in last weekend’s Cup race at Dover, as both AJ Allmendinger and Denny Hamlin suffered that exact unfortunate fate.

Due to this ongoing issue, the newly-designed single lug nut wheels have taken a lot of criticism. This simply wasn’t as large of a problem for teams when NASCAR was using the old five lug nut design. Surprisingly, none of these loose wheel incidents have led to any dangerous accidents yet, but the risk of it eventually happening is a growing one unless something changes soon.

So why are teams unable to solve the conundrum of the loose wheel? Many other forms of motorsport use similar wheel and rim concepts, and they don’t see this happen at nearly the same high rate. It might happen once or twice over the course of an entire Formula One season, if that. For NASCAR though, at least thus far, it’s been a riddle that teams have yet crack.

Below is a clip that I found insightful, a quick discussion involving Brett Griffin, Freddie Kraft and TJ Majors of the Door Bumper Clear podcast that provides some insider info on the matter. All three are former NASCAR spotters and after last weekend’s race, they wasted no time in diving into what happened at Dover, potential reasons why this keeps happening, and how the penalties for such infractions can be better delivered by NASCAR.

Needless to say, many in the sport are speaking up on the matter, notably of which are the crew chiefs responsible for making sure their pit crews are getting the job done in pit lane. Kyle Larson’s crew chief Cliff Daniels has been one of them, as he appeared on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio to discuss the ongoing situation. In his view, it’s less of an issue of human-error and moreso an issue surrounding the equipment provided to the teams by NASCAR.

“I hate that I’m going to have to say it but it’s the truth, the razor-thin line that we’re on right now from having a fast pit stop and having a potential issue is smaller than it has ever been. And believe it or not, there is more complexity and nuance in the single-lug pit stop than there was in the five-lug pit stop. And I know that’s really hard to believe, but a lot of it does boil down to limitations that we have with the current pit gun. 

Cliff Daniels re: NASCAR pit stops in 2022

With this being a view held by others in the sport as well, a rule that I think could be implemented is something similar to what Formula One introduced last season. With pit stops becoming increasingly quick year after year, the chances of an error occuring increase with that. Thus, the FIA introduced a new rule to slow down pit stops by setting time limits on how quickly certain actions of the pitstop can be completed.

For instance, the minimum time between the wheel guns being released from the wheels and the traffic light on the gantry signalling that the driver can take off was set to 0.2 seconds. At a glance, a time interval like that seems like nothing. In a sport as fast as Formula One though, the rule helps to reduce the risk of mistakes happening during a stop, like a wheel not being fastened properly.

Could NASCAR implement a similar rule? At this point, what have they got to lose other than more wheels?