NASCAR’s Managing Director of Racing Communications Mike Forde addressed the restart penalty assessed to Gio Ruggiero in the closing laps of the Craftsman Truck Series race at Watkins Glen on Friday evening.

On a restart on lap 69, Ruggiero was hit from behind by Brenden “Butterbean” Queen right as he was coming to the beginning of the restart zone. NASCAR ruled that Ruggiero jumped the restart. The penalty sent him to the rear of the field, where his team decided to change tires and try to salvage what they could. They ended up finishing in 15th.

Here’s a replay of the restart where Gio Ruggiero was penalized for jumping early.

Gio told Frontstretch he was “apologized to” after the race (video coming soon). NASCAR had no further comment. pic.twitter.com/mK5MQTrJ7C

— Stephen Stumpf (@stephen_stumpf) May 9, 2026

Following the race, Ruggiero shared with FrontStretch that NASCAR had apologized to him, ““I think it was just a bad call. Obviously, you know, I didn’t jump the restart. I think we kinda just gave the 11 (Kaden Honeycutt) team a nice gift there. I definitely think we would have won the race or had a close battle with the 71 (Connor Zilisch).”

Ruggiero was later asked, “Was there any explanation afterward?” He answered, “We were just apologized to. … It was a bad call like I said, but there’s really nothing they can do about it now. So, it’s unfortunate, but gotta focus forward and on to Dover.”

“I think it was just a bad call. I didn’t jump the restart.”@Gio_Ruggiero1 talks about his day and his controversial penalty that took away his chance for the win @WGI. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/VTVhBusgkW

— Frontstretch (@Frontstretch) May 9, 2026

Ruggiero’s spotter Freddie Kraft shared more details on how NASCAR addressed the situation during the race. He said on the most recent episode of Door Bumper Clear, “[Gio Ruggiero] said immediately, he said, ‘The guy behind me hit me and kinda knocked me into the box and then I took off. … They finally show a replay. And this is two and a half laps later whatever it is. Now I come unglued because I see the replay and I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. We didn’t jump the [expletive] start.’”

As for NASCAR’s response, he said, “We’re coming to green through the carousel and they send a message on their little chat, ‘We’re rescinding your penalty, but we we can’t give you your spot back because came and put tires on.’ Now, my blood pressure went way higher than 127 over 72 because I’m like, ‘You have to be [expletive] kidding me.’ And after the race they were just like, ‘Hey, we’re really sorry.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, that fixes everything…’

From there he indicated that the team’s crew chief Jeff Stankiewicz implored NASCAR to extend the caution so the team could come back in and put the old tires back on the truck in order to get the precious track position back.

On Hauler Talk on Tuesday, Forde addressed it saying, “[Gio Ruggiero] did jump. It was very close, but we viewed it as jumping the restart. Then there was a pretty immediate caution soon after and [with] that caution it gave us another opportunity to continue looking at that. We do that for all restarts even after we make the call. We’re just kinda checks and balances of like, ‘Hey, let’s make sure that that was good.’ But we felt confident. We wouldn’t have made the call if we didn’t feel confident.”

“Did notice that there was a bump in the back and if it’s close we always err on the side of the competitor. So, we said, ‘Yeah, that was pretty close. He may have jumped, but he may have got some help there as well.’ And so we were about to rescind the penalty and what happened was that the 17 ducked down to pit road and had a tire change. At that point, it would have been impossible to rescind it because if we rescinded it and put him back where he was at the front row, he would have had the tire advantage and that wouldn’t be fair, right? But as all this was happening, we sent an IM (Instant Message) to the team that said we are about to rescind these penalties. We did that before we announced it over the radio, but by the time that communication happened, or I don’t know exactly the time line cadence of all that, but it was too late. It never happened. We weren’t able to rescind that penalty.”

“We did talk to the crew chief, the driver, and the owner in the hauler,” he shared. “Talked through it and apologized for that miscommunication and the IM situation. That’s kinda how it all went down. When it was something that close and when we saw that bump, tie goes to the competitor. And if we can avoid making a call like that we will if it’s very, very close. And after reviewing it a little bit more we felt that it was pretty close.”

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