NASCAR putting safety plan to the test.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Crew chief Chad Knaus won’t get a look at the car Hendrick Motorsports built for Darlington Raceway until he gets to the track Sunday morning, a few hours before the race.

Kurt Busch? He’s already sat in his Chip Ganassi Racing car and met with his crew chief.

The return to racing for NASCAR has brought with it a set of safety protocols that will be strictly enforced at the track Sunday when the Cup Series goes racing for the first time in more than two months after a pandemic-forced hiatus. The stock car series can only trust competitors to follow the guidelines away from the track — and teams appear to have different interpretations.

“No face-to-face or contact with these guys whatsoever. Everything has been on [Zoom] team meetings,” said Knaus, a seven-time championship winning crew chief. “That’s the recommendation by NASCAR for the traveling teams to stay as isolated as they can and try to keep everybody at the race track as healthy as we can.” Not others.

Busch dropped by the Ganassi shop Thursday. He wanted a faceto-face meeting with crew chief Matt McCall before Darlington after two months of communicating via phone or computer.

Xfinity Series driver Ryan Sieg posted a video of an Atlanta news station visiting his Georgia-based team Thursday that showed three crew members standing side-byside. None wore face masks or other protective equipment.

Teams are limited to 16 employees per car Sunday and that includes the driver, spotter and owner.

Drivers were told to be at the track four hours ahead of the green flag Sunday. They will undergo a heath check including a temperature check, but no coronavirus testing.

Once inside, drivers will be isolated in their motorhomes, away from their team, and wait to be called to the cars.

NASCAR has warned of fines as high as $50,000 for not following the rules at the track, where competitors are subject to random health screenings. would host Sunday’s race.

Brasington III said when he lived in Oregon in the early 1990s, he saw a person at a grocery store with a Darlington T-shirt and the customer told him his family came to the country track for NASCAR every year.

“It brought home to me the impact that track has had on people,” he said, chuckling.

Tharp, who has worked at NASCAR since 2005, got his first true appreciation of the track from the late Jim Hunter, a racing executive and former Darlington president who told him: “You’re going to really, really think a lot of this place one day. This is a special place.”

Tharp has become a true believer.

“We might not be the fanciest or the most modern track out there,” he said. “But I think we’re the coolest.”