WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – NASCAR disqualified A.J. Allmendinger’s second-place finish in Saturday’s Xfinity race at Watkins Glen International after the No. 10 Chevrolet failed minimum rear height requirements.
Xfinity Series director Wayne Auton said every car passed a prerace height inspection. Six cars were measured postrace, and the No. 10 was the only car that didn’t meet the minimum.
In a postrace tweet, Allmendinger implied that contact with another could have caused the failure (and also caused handling problems in the race). His spotter, Brett Griffin, also said the car sustained damaged.
I can go into a full description of why it was low from contact early in the race on a restart. The issues we struggled with after cause track bar mount was bent and oil tank getting hung on the coil of the spring the rest of the race. But just doesnt f***ing matter. 💔💔💔💔 https://t.co/pUx2OI6yJM
— AJ Allmendinger (@AJDinger) August 3, 2019
Auton said there didn’t appear to be damage on Allmendinger’s car that would have caused the failure.
“The first thing we do is we inspect the car fully on the body panels,” Auton said. “We didn’t see any foreseeable damage on the car. We can’t get into the weeds on how much low or anything like that because the appeal process is in place now. They have until Monday at (noon) to appeal.”
Allmendinger has made two Xfinity starts for Kaulig Racing, and both resulted in disqualification. His car also failed inspection after finishing third in the July 5 race at Daytona International Speedway.
Auton said the team likely wouldn’t face a greater punishment for two failures in the past month.
“No, we’ll talk about it but whenever you get DQ’d, that’s a big penalty in itself,” he said. “We consider this race closed now. Once we DQ a car, we don’t go back and look at other penalties. That’s a big penalty right there.”
After being stripped of the finish, Allmendinger will be credited with earning one point and a 37th-place finish.