Flight Delay Leaves Truck Teams Without Pit Crews

What’s Happening?

At the start of the green flag for Friday night’s Craftsman Truck Series race in Las Vegas, roughly 10 teams were without pit crews, several of them having to leech from Xfinity and Cup Series teams until their own pit crews arrived.

You Need To Know:

• A broken part on the original plane meant to carry members of several pit crews to the Las Vegas track resulted in a delayed takeoff as they had to wait for a backup plane to become available.
• This delay was a major cause for concern as several teams were forced to undergo the green flag without a crew in their pit boxes.
• This resulted in a slight delay in the race’s start time as the green flag was pushed back by about five minutes, leading to some fan confusion.

As reported by Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports, this put the plane’s estimated arrival time at 5:52 pm pst. just 25 minutes before the already rescheduled drop of the green flag. A police escort will accompany the teams to the track.

Main Characters

The main characters of the story are the NASCAR teams left suspended in the air just moments before the race began. Many teams, such as Front Row Motorsports, got Cup or Xfinity crews to pitch in until their teams were able to safely arrive to the facility.

From The Officials

The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Twitter account tweeted this video of the crews finally arriving to the garage area.

In The Stands

Kenneth W Lee Jr. tweeted this stilled image of the plane touching down at the Las Vegas Airport.

Here, Twitter user DennyDeliversYT tweets a Kyle Busch pitstop with several RCR Xfinity crew members going over the wall in his team’s absence.

From The Pressbox

NASCAR reporter, Matt Weaver, pokes fun at the situation as he plays career BINGO!

Matthew Burroughs continues the criticism of FOX’s coverage of NASCAR.

Here Bob Pockrass Tweets that Kyle Busch’s pit crew is geared up and heading to pit road.

Jeff Gluck Tweets that the pit crews have arrived during caution.

UPDATE: With the pit crews now at the track, hopefully the rest of the race will go on without a hitch.