As COVID-19 cases are rising again in the southeast, NASCAR country is on high alert. See, two teams announced coronavirus cases just last week and with North Carolina seeing spikes in cases, NASCAR personnel aren’t immune to catching the virus.

NASCAR has developed a great plan in order to resume their season while in the midst of a global pandemic. But, in order to pull this off, changes to the daily routine was warranted.

“On an individual basis, you have to have those conversations with each guy that you have on your team,” Greg Ives, Alex Bowmans crew chief said on Friday. “From the comfort level of traveling to different areas. I’ve had that conversation with them.

“The other thing is, everybody at Hendrick Motorsports is taking this time seriously. When we are traveling to Pocono, how are we going to feed our guys and supply them with the food they need? It may sound trivial, but (one way is) not having them go to restaurants to potentially expose them.

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“And we’ve come up with plans where basically we give them the meals they need so they are only going to one location. Making sure they eat at the track versus going out to somewhere else. Those types of things, even from how we are feeding the guys to how we are protecting them, is definitely very much important to not only myself, but everybody at Hendrick Motorsports.

“I feel like we’re doing it the best way, the safest way. For those that may feel uncomfortable in those scenarios or situations, we’re definitely hearing their voice and taking the proper protocol.”

Team Penske’s Joey Logano is taking this seriously too. Penske, was one of the two teams with a confirmed case within their organization. As a driver, Logano can’t afford to catch this.

“Some of the best advice I’ve gotten out of this whole thing is assume everybody has coronavirus and what would you do?” Logano said. “You’re obviously not going to shake someone’s hand, you’re going to stay a little more distant, you’re going to wear your mask, you’re going to wash your hands often or use hand sanitizer. You’re going to do that stuff.

“If you have that mindset that the person next to you has COVID-19, you’re going to obviously be nervous about it. So I’ve tried to treat everyone like they have COVID-19. That’s at least my way of trying to stay safe. Our sport has done a real good job at it and I think Team Penske has done even better, in my opinion.”

Logano, said that they take this very seriously at Penske and he’s appreciative of that.

“If you look at Team Penske, I can’t speak for all the teams, but they are very strict at how seriously they’re taking this virus,” Logano said. “Everybody in that place has a mask on all day long. If you get on a team plane, you’re (wearing a) mask and rubber gloves the whole time.

“They’ve done a really good job at that. If you look at who else they needed to quarantine after that, it’s a very small group because everybody has been so strict at Team Penske to where it doesn’t shut down our whole race shop.

“We’ve done a real good job social distancing where we can, but also wearing our PPE (personal protective equipment) all the time. That’s the most important things we can do.”