Denny Hamlin's Crew Chief Reveals Details of Special NASCAR Meeting on Latest Controversy

Denny Hamlin secured a 10th-place result at Talladega in Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race due to fortune and being one of the few cars not involved in a massive pileup of more than 20 cars with five laps to go. Like everyone else, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver witnessed the disaster class NASCAR officials displayed implementing their towing and damaged vehicle policy following the crash. So did his crew chief Chris Gabehart.

The latter made his weekly Thursday appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio and talked about the hot topic of conversation this week, including offering details on the special meeting sanctioning body officials held with crew chiefs and other team personnel on how the towing and damaged vehicle policy will be enforced starting Sunday at the Charlotte Roval.

"In this meeting, NASCAR wanted to go over, in light of that, they're wanting to make sure that all the competitors moving forward for the remainder of the year have a clear understanding of what their intent is," Gabehart said. "And their intent is not to put anybody out of the race that doesn't mistakenly need to be.

"So if they misjudge-your-damage type of thing, they don't want to put it on their officials on the ground. And because of that, they want to put it more in our hands. So it sounds like towing cars back to the pit stall is going to be more of a thing. A lot like you saw with the 9 and the 14 (at Talladega).

"If the kind of call is on the fence, if the cars can't move, but we're not sure how bad the damage is, they want to put it back in the team's hands and give them an opportunity to go out and compete again. I don't want to speak entirely for them on the specifics. I'm sure they'll do that in the coming days, but the gist of it is, it sounds like they're going to loosen up the reins a little bit with five to go."

NASCAR officials have justifiably received a lot of grief from all directions for their embarrassing blunder at Talladega. To their credit, they reacted and responded with a plan going forward for the rest of the year. And according to Gabehart, it doesn't stop here. There are also plans to address the topic further in the offseason.

Related: Denny Hamlin Angry With Bubba Wallace After Talladega