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NASCAR has suspended two crew members from Ross Chastain’s No. 1 Trackhouse Racing team after a wheel came off his car during the March 1 Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas, an automatic consequence under the sanctioning body’s tire and wheel installation rules.
What Went Wrong at COTA
The right-rear wheel separated from Chastain’s car on lap 75 while the race was still under green flag conditions. NASCAR’s post-race review determined the wheel hadn’t been properly secured during an earlier pit stop, and once the car returned to racing speed, the vibration and centrifugal force did the rest, sending the wheel loose on an active road course with cars still running at full speed.
That’s exactly the scenario NASCAR’s detached-wheel rule exists to prevent. A loose wheel doesn’t just end one team’s day, it becomes a hazard for every other driver on track who suddenly has to dodge a heavy rolling object while managing their own car at speed. That risk to the rest of the field is why NASCAR treats these incidents as an automatic penalty rather than something left to a case-by-case judgment call.
Who Got Suspended and For How Long
Following its review, NASCAR suspended rear-tire changer Kenneth Pozega and jackman Josh Appleby, the two crew members directly responsible for the pit stop where the wheel was installed. Both will sit out the next two Cup Series points races, with their suspensions running through the event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 15. They’ll be eligible to return to Chastain’s pit crew once that weekend wraps up.
NASCAR’s penalty report made clear the discipline stopped there: no fines, no points deductions, and no additional penalties tied to the incident, just the standard suspension for the crew members involved in the botched stop. The same report also confirmed no penalties came out of the Truck Series or O’Reilly Series races that weekend, meaning the wheel incident was the only disciplinary matter to come out of the COTA weekend.
Why This Keeps Happening Across the Garage
Detached-wheel suspensions have become one of NASCAR’s most consistent and predictable enforcement actions in recent seasons, and for good reason: pit stops require crew members to pull lug nuts, mount new tires, and send a car back into traffic in a matter of seconds, and there’s very little margin for error in that process. Even a small mistake during a stop can go unnoticed until the car is back up to speed, at which point the consequences show up in dramatic fashion.
For Trackhouse Racing, the immediate impact is practical rather than punitive in a big-picture sense: the team now has to plug in replacement crew members for two races in specialized roles that typically take significant repetition to master. Pit crew execution is often the difference between gaining or losing track position on a given stop, so even a short-term lineup change carries real competitive weight for Chastain’s team heading into Las Vegas.
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