Following the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race on Friday night, NASCAR admitted that the GEICO Restart Zone had been painted in the incorrect location at the 1-mile Phoenix Raceway. While the sanctioning body had noticed the error prior to the start of the racing action on Friday, NASCAR met with NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series teams to see if they wanted to move the restart zone to the proper location.
The Truck Series teams opted to keep the zone where it was. After a chaos-filled NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event, NASCAR will be moving the restart zone to the proper location for the remainder of the race weekend.
FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass and The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck had the first reports of the issues pertaining to the restart zone.
According to Pockrass, the location of the restart zone will be the same location from last season’s championship race weekend.
NASCAR will repaint the restart zone overnight for Xfinity and Cup races to bring it back to the location it was for the 2022 finale. The zone was inadvertently painted in the wrong spot prior to the weekend and they talked to truck teams prior to race today and opted to keep it.
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) November 4, 2023
Gluck earlier in the evening on Friday shared a photo of the new location of the restart zone. At the time, it was not known that the restart zone had been painted in the incorrect position.
As noted by the @CouchRacerShop account, the restart zone at Phoenix has been moved. You can see the old one to the left, painted over in black. Blue is the new zone. Start/finish line is much closer now, to the right. pic.twitter.com/aVnLjl1qI7
— Jeff Gluck (@jeff_gluck) November 4, 2023
You can see in the photo where the restart zone was placed last season (the darker patch to the left of the blue GEICO signage). That will be where the zone is moved back to for Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship Race, and Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race.
