UPDATE: Saturday, March 11, 2023 at 4:15 PM ET —
In addition to the four Hendrick Motorsports entries, NASCAR has also confiscated the hood louvers from the No. 31 Kaulig Racing NASCAR Cup Series team on Saturday at Phoenix Raceway.
Like the hood louvers from the Hendrick Motorsports teams, the hood louvers from the No. 31 team will go back to the NASCAR R&D Center for further evaluation. Any modifications found to the louvers could result in penalties.
If there are any penalties, NASCAR will announce them sometime next week.
ORIGINAL STORY: Friday, March 10, 2023 at 10:35 PM ET —
Kyle Larson led the way in final practice for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series United Rentals Work United 500 at Phoenix Raceway, but following Friday’s practice session, there was drama in the garage for the Hendrick Motorsports teams.
NASCAR confirmed to TobyChristie.com that it confiscated the hood louvers from all four Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Camaros following Friday’s practice session and the sanctioning body will take the louvers to the NASCAR R&D Center for further evaluation.
FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass had the first report of NASCAR confiscating the Hendrick Motorsports hood louvers.
Hood louvers, like many components on the Next Gen car, are a single-source supplied part, which is not permitted to be modified per the NASCAR Cup Series rulebook.
Section 14.1.d of the NASCAR Cup Series Rulebook: except in cases explicitly permitted in the nascar rules, installation of additional components, repairs, deletions, and/or modifications to next gen single source vendor-supplied parts and/or assemblies will not be permitted.
A NASCAR Spokesperson tells TobyChristie.com that any penalties stemming from the confiscated hood louvers are to be determined, and penalties are not a certainty. It’ll all depend on what is found in the evaluation of the louvers at the R&D center.
If there are any penalties that stem from the confiscated louvers, NASCAR will announce them sometime next week.
NASCAR confiscating the hood louvers from the Hendrick cars come a week after the organization swept the top-three positions in the Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The four Hendrick cars were spread throughout the running order of Friday’s practice session. Larson led the way, while Alex Bowman ranked third in the session. William Byron, who won last weekend’s race at Las Vegas, was 20th and Josh Berry ranked 23rd substituting for Chase Elliott in the No. 9 entry.
RELATED: 2023 NASCAR Cup Series United Rentals 500 at Phoenix Practice Results
The Hendrick teams will head into Saturday’s qualifying session with new sets of hood louvers. It’ll be interesting to see if this impacts the speed of the HMS quartet.
