NASCAR revised its Damaged Vehicle Policy (DVP) rule in time for the 2025 season, allowing cars that have been repaired after suffering damage to return to the track. The rule has since been changed to provide teams more leeway. Teams were not permitted to replace the diffuser flaps while repairing an affected vehicle under the previously amended rule, but they are now permitted to do so after the vehicle is returned to the garage. The car’s ability to stay on the ground depends on these flaps. A crashed car would be disqualified from the race if it was driven or towed back to the garage, according to the old NASCAR DVP. But it always gave teams seven minutes to fix the vehicles on the pit road, and if it crossed that time limit, the car would be disqualified (teams would have eight minutes at the Atlanta Motor Speedway).
The time restriction remains in effect from this season forward, although teams must perform repairs that take more than seven minutes in their Cup Series garage in order to avoid having their vehicle removed. The rule was updated after the Bristol Motor Speedway race, as reported by Fox Sports journalist Bob Pockrass. “NASCAR updated its Cup DVP policy where it used to not allow teams to replace the diffuser flaps but now they can replace the diffuser flaps (extensions) when making their repairs,” Pockrass posted to X. Kyle Larson, the number five driver in the Cup Series, recently demonstrated the impact of the revised Damaged Vehicle Policy at the Darlington Raceway suffered a wreck in lap four of the race, and was able to make it to the pits where his team worked on the car to get him back out in the running for the latter part of the event.
An NASCAR executive remarks on the original Damaged Vehicle Policy, saying, “We don’t want to put cars out of the race.” Last year’s race at the Talladega Superspeedway in October, which saw 28 vehicles engaged in a major collision, was one of the incidents that sparked a discussion over NASCAR’s Damaged Vehicle Policy. Elton Sawyer, the vice president of competition for the stock car association, spoke after the event and clarified that the association has never intended to remove working cars from the field; rather, they do so for safety reasons and to avoid having to rely on a variety of factors to determine whether it is safe for the vehicle to resume its course.
We don’t want to disqualify any automobiles from the competition. We had an incident where we brought down more than twenty-five cars in Turn 3 [at Talladega]. We don’t know if their inability to continue is due to their high-sidedness or simply being in the grass. We want to err on the side of the competitors, therefore it puts a lot of pressure on us to conclude that they have suspension damage and are unable to continue,” he stated via On3. At 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, April 27, the Talladega Superspeedway will host the next NASCAR Cup Series event.
