​Motorsport photoIt’s an open question to how impactful it will prove to be, but NASCAR’s recent rule changes to the front splitter assembly could play a factor in deciding the results of the Chase for the Championship that starts in September.In mid-July, right before the race weekend at North Wilkesboro Speedway, competition officials mandated teams add struts to the front splitter, which has been widely described as a benefit for Ford and Chevrolet teams against an advantage found by Toyota teams.To be clear, no rules were broken and NASCAR only made the changes to level competition, but the rule was designed to prevent the splitter from moving or deforming at speed. Over the weekend, Joey Logano said this was just a matter of creating a consistent application of a rule across every team and manufacturer. “I don’t know if it was designed just to help others. I think it was just to bring the field to where everyone was doing the same thing,” said Logano on Saturday during a press conference. “There were cars that were more aggressive with that rule than others. I’m just telling you how it is. Some teams feel more comfortable pushing things past the edge a little bit and getting their hand slapped or worse, and other teams are a little bit more conservative.“That was something that was obviously a decent sized needle mover for some teams. Kudos to NASCAR for finding a way to enforce it. It’s not an easy rule to enforce, obviously, so they’ve found a way to do it, so kudos to them.”Denny Hamlin said he isn’t sure how big of a difference this is, but expressed frustration that rules could be changed mid-season simply because someone may have found a legal advantage. “We live in a garage where if a team’s not running well, they’ll just go to NASCAR and complain about something and try to get the rules of it changed,” Hamlin told Motorsport.com after the race on Sunday. “But NASCAR’s been doing that for many years. Back when I was watching NASCAR in the ’90s, they would be like, “Okay, we’re going to add half inch spoiler to the Pontiacs,” or something like that. So it’s been going on for a long time, but certainly any advantage we had had been earned.”To his point, anyone in the garage in the 90s knew how vocal of a political advocate Jack Roush or Ray Evernham could be in the tech inspection line or behind closed doors with the Sanctioning Body. This isn’t new.However, these changes will seemingly most affect the intermediate track races where Hamlin and his JGR and 23XI peers seemed to have the best cars all season.Jonathan Hassler, crew chief of the race winning Penske No. 12, says has been some help there for the Ford.“I definitely think they work in our favor,” Hassler told Motorsport.com. “Just the shape of our nose is a little bit different and that definitely helps level the playing field a little bit in our opinion. Is it small a lot of these on the short track package? Sure. But it’s a stacking pen