The rules in the NASCAR Truck Series are fairly different when compared to the O'Reilly Auto Parts and the Cup Series. The debate about Truck penalties was sparked after 13 teams and 14 drivers were hit with a timed penalty at Rockingham, which baffled fans and experts.

While most of them shared their reactions on social media, Bubba Wallace's spotter, Freddie Kraft, took it a level further to call out the governing body. Speaking on this week's episode of the "Door Bumper Clear" podcast, he said:

"They’re not cheating. They’re not trying to get something through tech; They just are struggling to get through tech."

Echoing his thoughts, co-host Tommy Baldwin said, "You're making all these teams cut their trucks up becauase of their fault, NASCAR's fault, by not implementing the rules in the first place. You’re hurting the sponsors, you’re hurting the drivers, you’re potentially gonna hurt young kids that need time on the track."

Corey Lajoie, Brenden Queen, Tyler Ankrum, Clayton Green, Frankie Muniz, Layne Riggs, Justin Haley, Timmy Hill, Kris Wright, Justin Carroll, Christian Eckes, Caleb Costner, and Ben Rhodes were all hit with a 10-minute penalty at Rockingham.

This penalty came into existence after the teams failed pre-race tech inspection in for two weeks in a row. As a result, the teams were penalized and their practice time came down to 40 minutes at Rockingham from 50 minutes.

The same issue plagued the Truck field at Texas, with the cars of 18 drivers failing pre-race tech inspection in the first try. Every team passed in the second attempt, but the penalties stayed.

While NASCAR has yet to explicity address this issue, at Texas, it was a penalty in the Cup Series race that took the paddock and fans by storm.

NASCAR's Texas penalty for Ryan Preece sparks debate

While the fans were yet to get accustomed to the Truck Series penalties, there came another, and this time in the Cup Series. NASCAR slapped Ryan Preece with a $50,000 fine and docked 25 points after the RFK Racing driver hit Ty Gibbs during the Texas Motor Speedway race last Sunday.

"We try to look at prior instances," NASCAR’s VP of race communications Mike Forde said. "The deliberation on how we wanted to handle this one was the Denny Hamlin penalty. When he wrecks Ross Chastain at Phoenix a few years ago, and then the next day, talked about it on his podcast, later got the exact same penalty."

"So, he [Preece] said what he said (about wrecking Gibbs on team radio), and then he did what he said. And so, in our view, it was intentionally wrecking another vehicle. That’s where we landed," Forde concluded.

However, Kyle Busch, who had a similar incident with John Hunter Nemechek in the race, avoided getting the penalty. Justifying this, Forde said that the SMT data suggested that the movement was unintentional and there was no aggressive radio message from Busch that suggested otherwise.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Sabyasachi Biswas

Edited by

Yask Kotak