Controversy at Hickory Motor Speedway…

On March 11, 2023 we qualified on the pole at Hickory Motor Speedway! It looked like we could potentially be on track to our 4th straight win. However, the excitement was short lived. On the first official lap Doug was forced into a three wide situation and it resulted in both him and the outside pole sitter wrecking out of race number one.

Over the course of the next two hours, the Barnes Racing team thrashed to try and get the car ready for race two. They thought their hard work was about to pay off, until Hickory Motor Speedway enforced an unwritten rule on them. The “rule” states that “Each car must complete a minimum of 20 laps in order to compete in race number two.” Since we had wrecked out only two laps into race one, we were not eligible to compete, and we were only given the option to start and park. We decided not to enter the race.

A few weeks after the controversy occurred, Hickory Motor Speedway finally put the ‘Unwritten rule” into place. They also added another rule that looks to silence any sort of criticism of the track. Air Doug was not thrilled about this rule at all. Watch his response to the new rules here: