NASCAR Car Inspections Hinged on ‘Ridiculous’ Margins, Claims Insider NASCAR 23XI insider exposes how tolerances, environmental effects, and tech inspections fuel rising car failures and fan frustrati

In recent seasons, inspection failures have become a recurring storyline in NASCAR. Often, it has happened that half the field has struggled to clear pre-race checks on the first attempt, ultimately leading to loss of pit stall selection or car chief ejections. Worse, even post-race disqualifications. And since 2018, NASCAR has tightened enforcement with tools like its Optical Scanning Station (OSS), which checks a car’s body with extreme precision, down to fractions of an inch. And because these margins are so tiny, any small deviations in them can lead to failures, which ultimately frustrate the fans who blame the team’s deliberation behind it. But the root cause is not always misconduct.

The perception-versus-reality gap around inspections has only widened with incidents across the 202