It seems that there has been a lot of progress in the communication department between NASCAR and drivers.
After receiving a lot of criticism from drivers regarding the lack of communication and drivers’ input, NASCAR decided to organize weekly meetings. And it seems that progress is being made with this effort.
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Jeff Burton who acts as the director of the drivers’ advisory council spoke about the effect of this weekly meeting.
“We made a lot of progress in identifying issues and working hard to alleviate those, and the communication the last month has gotten much, much better,” Burton told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “The communication from NASCAR all along was really good, but getting all the drivers (in a) weekly meeting at the track where by far the majority of drivers have been attending… now everybody much more understands what is being done to help with these problems.”
This season has seen two drivers, Kurt Busch and Alex Bowman, suffer concussion-like symptoms and miss a number of races. Not just that, but they also missed out on their shot at the championship. This further pressed on the need to have better communication channels between drivers and NASCAR.
“These meetings have also allowed conversations between drivers and NASCAR at a level that we’ve never really had before,” continued Burton. “We’ve never — for, say, a month straight — got all the drivers, all the key principals from NASCAR, in one room together and discussed issues. Not, ‘OK, here’s the start/finish line. Here’s the restart procedure.’ Not that, but (on) issues with the car.
“That communication has been really good for everybody, because you have a lot of different opinions, a lot of different ideas, a lot of different thoughts of what we can do and everybody being able to get in a room and debate, discuss, and leave there with, ‘OK, let’s go do this.’ That’s been phenomenal.”
It seems at least the groundwork is laid for further improvement. The next step now would be to take the drivers’ input and put it into the changes in the Next Gen car for the next season.