37 Cup teams are in Las Vegas competing in Sundays Pennzoil 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN) and 32 of them passed technical inspection on Friday without problems. Five of them though didn’t.
Due to Cup practice and qualifying being on Saturday morning Nevada time, NASCAR conducted pre-qualifying inspection for teams Friday evening.
The cars of Kevin Harvick, Chase Elliott, Harrison Burton, Todd Gilliland and Josh Bilicki all failed inspection twice and due to that each team had a crew member ejected and will lose pit selection for Sunday’s race at Las Vegas, regardless of where they qualify.
Car chief Robert Smith (Harvick), car chief Matt Barndt (Elliott), car chief Cody Sauls (Burton), car chief Tony Manzer (Gilliland) and engineer Nicholas Sowa (Bilicki) left the premises.
This affects Gilliland’s team the most as they are already without crew chief Seth Barbour as well as crew members Jourdan Osinskie and Tanner Andrews. All three were suspended four races on Tuesday after Gilliland’s car suffered a loose wheel in last Sunday’s race at Fontana.