{"id":26569,"date":"2016-04-29T16:05:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T23:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=26569"},"modified":"2016-04-29T16:06:27","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T23:06:27","slug":"why-5-lug-nuts-over-4-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/why-5-lug-nuts-over-4-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why 5 Lug Nuts Over 4 Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"during<\/a>
during practice for the NASCAR XFINITY Series VFW Sport Clips Help A Hero 200 at Darlington Raceway on September 4, 2015 in Darlington, South Carolina.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let me tell you a little story: A few months ago, I took my car in for service, including rotating the tires. Unfortunately, the technician had a problem getting one of the lug nuts off a rim and wound up gouging the chrome that surrounded the lug nut.<\/p>\n

And in so doing, the lug nut was ruined.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, I was ticked off at first, but after doing some research, I learned that my particular type of chrome rim is prone to such an issue. The technician wasn\u2019t negligent; it was part failure, so to speak.<\/p>\n

The store manager told me I had two options: Replace the rim ($300 or more) or go with only four lug nuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, if it was my wife or daughter driving, I wouldn\u2019t let them drive with a wheel having only four lug nuts,\u201d the manager said. \u201cThat\u2019s unsafe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which brings me to my point: If four lug nuts is unsafe on a passenger car, how could NASCAR teams think four \u2013 or in some cases, only three \u2013 lug nuts will keep a wheel properly on a car and not cause problems?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I applaud NASCAR for its edict earlier this week mandating that from this point on, things were going back to the old way (pre-2015), where all four wheels on a Sprint Cup, Xfinity or Truck Series vehicle must have all five lug buts affixed and tightened.<\/p>\n

Sure, if you have only three or four lug nuts affixed, you may save a half-a-second or so during pit stops. But driving around without the required five lug nuts created all types of problems with drivers having loose wheels, particularly in recent races at Texas and Richmond.<\/p>\n

Hellooooooo, duhhhhhhhh. Of COURSE, you\u2019re going to have problems if you don\u2019t have all lug nuts affixed and tight.<\/p>\n

Honestly, when NASCAR began allowing teams to go with four or even three tightened lug nuts starting in 2015, I felt it was a risky move to do in the first place \u2013 and for all the same reasons why the sanctioning body reversed itself earlier this week.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, NASCAR\u2019s teams were running the risk of some serious tragedy occurring by worrying more about saving a half-second or so on pit road vs. safety of the driver, other drivers and yes, potentially of fans.<\/p>\n

But be for the grace of a higher power, the sport dodged a huge bullet, in my opinion, in the roughly 1 \u00bc seasons that the now-former policy was in place. Frankly, I believe it not only was a matter of time before a loose wheel would cause disaster, I also am surprised that nothing significant had indeed happened up to this point.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s sheer luck.<\/p>\n

NASCAR implemented the four or three lug policy last season because teams had lobbied for it. While it may have seemed like a good idea initially, it ultimately proved to be too much of a risk to continue taking.<\/p>\n

I reflect back to when Indy cars used to race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. During a race back in 1999, three spectators were killed and nearly a dozen more were injured by a tire and debris that flew up into the grandstands.<\/p>\n

I also reflect back a couple of years ago when Kyle Larson wrecked during an Xfinity race at Daytona International Speedway and one of his tires sailed into the grandstands, injuring several fans.<\/p>\n

Now, think about it, while those two particular incidents were the results of wrecks that caused the respective vehicles to break apart, the point I\u2019m making is that the wheels on both the Indy car and the Sprint Cup car were both attached with proper lug nuts prior to impact.<\/p>\n

And yet those incidents still caused tragedy.<\/p>\n

Why would teams want to gamble and risk so much just to save a half-second or so on pit road? It just doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad NASCAR went back to the old way. Sure, teams may not be happy, but if by having five lug nuts on and tight on every wheel, the sport winds up saving lives, it\u2019s well worth the extra effort \u2013 and the extra time it takes to assure safety wins out over shortened time on pit road.<\/p>\n

Follow me on Twitter @JerryBonkowski<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASCAR\u2019s teams were running the risk of some serious tragedy.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":26571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,3424],"tags":[4408,3384,127,2536,4409],"class_list":["post-26569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-column","category-nascar","tag-5-lugs-vs-4","tag-jerry-bonkowski","tag-nascar","tag-safety","tag-why-5-lug-nuts-matters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/DR-NXS-090415-07.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-6Ux","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26569"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26572,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26569\/revisions\/26572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}