When the Duramax Texas Grand Prix kicked off, who would have thought it’d be a race of attrition? Now, racing in Texas in March was always going to be tricky because of the heat. Fortunately, NASCAR was prepared with a contingency plan, and that was called a cooling suit. Unfortunately, there was an unexpected development, and Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman was one of the many victims.

How did NASCAR deal with the Alex Bowman situation at COTA?

In an episode of Hauler Talk, NASCAR insiders talked about how the events unfolded.

Sometime during the third stage, a suffering Alex Bowman pulled into the pit lane. Since the car was still in decent condition, Hendrick Motorsports roped in Myatt Snider at the last moment to hop in. With that said, what is the protocol for a substitute driver to take over when the original driver cannot continue?

Apparently, NASCAR has a system to vet drivers and approve them for race tracks. Normally, this happens well before the weekend begins, so it happening during a race was unprecedented.

“Yeah, so he [Snider] had his d–g test for the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts series.” Mike Forde said. “Then he would upgrade his license to the NASCAR Cup Series as part of the approval process. Obviously, he didn’t do any paperwork or pay the fee at that point, but that is something we’ll figure out moving forward. Don’t know where that is, but he had a license to race in NASCAR.”

The reason why Snider was roped in was that he had an impressive resume. Additionally, he had some relatively recent runs in the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts Series. This was basically the 31-year-old’s NASCAR Cup debut, so did NASCAR take that into account when approving him?

What’s interesting is that the approval was all track-based. Since they were at the Circuit of the Americas, and road courses are easier to give approval for, the process was quick. The same would also apply to a short track like Martinsville or even Phoenix.

However, he would have been ineligible to race if this were any other track. What helped Snider’s case was that the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts series was hugely competitive, and he had decent results.

Strangely, there weren’t too many questions about him adapting to the Next Gen car. Normally, in those situations, NASCAR conducts optional rookie tests. Another point in Snider’s favor was that his name was in the NASCAR database, so they didn’t have to look far to find him. The whole process took 10-15 minutes in a situation that would normally take hours.

How bad was the situation at the Circuit of the Americas?

As mentioned earlier, Alex Bowman‘s cool suit was not the only one that failed. In fact, multiple drivers found themselves severely hampered by cool suit malfunctions. Post-race, AJ Allmendinger actually collapsed when he got out of his car and had to be stretchered away. Fortunately, he has since been released and is now hale and hearty.

Kevin Harvick noted, “Let’s not forget, this was a full day’s work. Whether your cool suit is working or not, it’s just that there aren’t a lot of caution laps. Not a lot of time to take a break. There’s a lot of shifting. The car hits the ground a tremendous amount here, so there’s just that constant pounding of all the bumps and all the rubber blocks hitting the ground. It’s a tough day’s work for the driver because you have so many shifts and so much going on inside the car.

So what went wrong?

Denny Hamlin’s theory was that a heat soak during the caution periods was the cause of the failures. Over here, reduced airflow traps heat inside the car and overwhelms the cooling systems. He explained that without the airflow that comes when the cars are at full throttle at racing speeds, the suits overheat and shut down.