It’s pretty clear that NASCAR has spent some time in the off-season re-living controversial situations from 2024 and figuring out ways to avoid them in 2025.
As a result, we have a whole new list of rules to sift through going into the new year. But, I believe, for the most part, they’ve done a good job addressing the challenges they were presented: what to do with drivers who willingly skip races, how do you handle over-aggressive driving at the end of races or efforts to manipulate results by drivers or manufacturers.
The biggest challenges when you’re writing new rules, is to look for, and avoid areas of unintended consequences. Are there any in these new rules? We won’t know for a while.
Nor do these rules guarantee we’ll get through 2025 without controversy. These teams are always looking for an edge, and that just about ensures someone will step into the gray area and necessitate another rule book re-write next off-season.