It’s become a normal occurrence for NASCAR drivers’ cool suits to fail during days where track temperatures are over 100 degrees. Such was the case during Sunday’s Cup Series race at COTA.
Multiple drivers, including AJ Allmendinger and Kyle Larson, reported cool suit failures. Allmendinger collapsed on pit road after the race and was stretchered to the infield care center.
For Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic, the issue of the system designed to keep drivers cool inside the race car has gone on long enough. He called out the lack of quality control from NASCAR’s cool suit manufacturer.
“How hard is it?” Bianchi said on The Teardown. “Seriously, who is in charge of making these things, like, at some point, don’t you have to have some pride in your work and your craftsmanship of ‘Hey, man, our product keeps sucking and breaking and it’s cooking our drivers.’ If I’m a competitor — seriously, someone needs to start a business, figure it out and if you could figure out a cool shirt that doesn’t break, you’re gonna make money because whoever’s doing this now, it’s not working. There is no quality control whatsoever in what they’re doing.”
Fortunately for Allmendinger, he was evaluated and released from the care center. He was overheating inside his No. 16 Chevrolet and it was an uncomfortable ride for him at COTA.
Cool suit failures are becoming more common in NASCAR
Denny Hamlin doesn’t wear a cool suit. He explained on “Actions Detrimental” what he believes is causing the cool suit failures.
“It seemed like there was some cool shirt issues, and that’s definitely the downside to it is that if it does not work it is worse than not having it at all,” Hamlin said. “I think the car heat soaks. That’s what I think is causing these things to go bad, is that they’re going out when temperatures are up.”
Hamlin didn’t have a solution to fix the problem. Bianchi wants to see a fix, concerned about driver safety.
“How about you put on one of your cool suits,” Bianchi said. “What was it… track temps over 100 degrees? You go sit in a race car, dude, for three hours wearing your suit that doesn’t work and you bake like a rotisserie chicken and then you get back to me, and we can have a conversation.
“… AJ Allmendinger… this is a serious thing, like, when you have people collapsing out of the race car, when you have drivers like Allmendinger collapsing, and I understand, it’s hot and these things are gonna happen sometimes, but it does become a thing of you really need to look into this and figure this out to keep these guys cool and figure out why we can’t get these things to work on a consistent basis.”