NASCAR denied the claim that spotters are not allowed to talk to their drivers about the playoffs.
That claim was made on the most recent episode of the Door, Bumper, Clear podcast by Freddie Kraft, Bubba Wallace’s spotter. He said, “We are no longer allowed to mention the word points as a spotter, as a team. I know some teams did it. God bless them, they got away with it, but on Saturday it was a playoff driver that was in no threat of losing his position asked his spotter, ‘What’s the playoffs look like? What’s going on?’ And the spotter simply read the standings, ‘This one’s out by 35. This one’s out by 25. This one’s out by 10. This one’s out by 5. The cut line is pretty tight whatever.’ No directions. No anything. Just read the standings. And he got a warning from NASCAR, ‘Do not talk about the points standings.’
When asked why by co-host Karsyn Elledge, Kraft explained, “Because they don’t want race manipulation.”
Wait, spotter’s can’t talk about playoffs on the radio at all? 📻🚫
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YouTube: https://t.co/3lShQI6gXk@FreddieKraft | @TBR7NY | @KarsynElledge3 pic.twitter.com/va5TP2haqw— Dirty Mo Media (@DirtyMoMedia) October 6, 2025
NASCAR is denying this claim. Senior Director of Racing Communications Amanda Ellis was asked about Kraft’s comments on the Hauler Talk podcast, “Someone is saying that spotters were told post Martinsville that they couldn’t talk about the points at all aside from listing them. Amanda, can you address that? Can you confirm or deny: Did NASCAR tell spotters after Martinsville last year they can’t tell drivers in cut off races about the points?”
She answered, “Nay, no. That’s a great question. To my knowledge there was no formal communication to spotters following Martinsville that told them they could not talk about points. It did come up during the Xfinity race on Saturday where two specific teams were warned during some of the conversations that they were having. And NASCAR communicated to them via the IM chat capabilities that we have. … And they were just given a warning that if the points didn’t have to do with them, their specific car and vehicle, we did not want to see them talking about points.”
“And I think to kind of take that one step further, it’s not a message of you can’t talk about points, it’s more a message of if you’re talking about points it should be about your car and your vehicle and not other vehicles that are in play,” she added.
Managing Director of Racing Communications Mike Forde also added, “At the time, it was at the very beginning of the race. No matter what moves team A or B did, it would not have affected anything. There was at no point where we were like, ‘This is questionable. This is problematic.’ But we wanted to get ahead of it with the teams in question and just say, ‘Hey, if this is at the end of the race and you’re still doing this, it’s not going to be good for anybody.’ Because if you talk about points and then have some actions that are questionable, 1+1 is always going to equal 2 here and then you’re going to be in hot water.”
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