Tag: Elton Sawyer

Confusion over NASCAR officiating in Cup Series’ biggest ever crash

Confusion and irritation about NASCAR officiating was rampant after the “Big One” broke out Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway. There were 27 cars collected in the incident on the backstretch with five laps to go in regulation time. Among the issues …

Confusion and irritation about NASCAR officiating was rampant after the “Big One” broke out Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.

There were 27 cars collected in the incident on the backstretch with five laps to go in regulation time. Among the issues raised was NASCAR towing cars back to pit road, two of those being playoff drivers Chase Briscoe and Chase Elliott. Both were damaged in the incident and could not get their cars back under their own power.

 

In recent weeks, NASCAR reiterated its rule that if a driver cannot drive back to pit road after being involved in an incident, their race is over. Briscoe and Elliott were both able to finish the race after being rescued, returned to the pits and serviced by their teams.

Another issue was with the red flag. Once lifted and the field put back under yellow, the pace car did not start rolling the field. Meanwhile, those already on pit road before the red flag could have their teams begin working on their cars.

“We’ve got to get that cleaned up as a sport,” JTG Daugherty winning crew chief Mike Kelley said. “There are teams with a lot on the line that are sitting out there just waiting on wreckers to get to them. This is my 30th year doing this, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen them turn the yellow flag on and allow guys to work on cars while other cars are just sitting there [behind the pace car].

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“I’m sure they’ll think about that and talk about that because if you’re a guy who’s sixth in the championship hunt and you’re sitting there waiting on somebody to get to you, but the other guys are working – maybe I’m looking at it wrong and the DVP clock evens it all out – I was getting confused when Ricky kept coming by. There’s still four cars sitting here.

“They were put in a tough situation with that many cars involved in that wreck and [having] this many wreckers and the cars look to be damaged and in the grass. They couldn’t use the airlift system. Some guys are running it, and some guys are not, so it’s a tough situation. We’ll learn from it and get better at it, but it was a lot of new things kind of happening.”

NASCAR senior vice president of competition, Elton Sawyer, addressed the media Sunday night on those incidents and more.

“I would prefer us not to be standing here talking about this,” Sawyer said. “I want us to be talking about Ricky’s [Stenhouse Jr.] big win, talking about our playoffs, but when you’re in live sporting events and you’re in officiating that’s going to happen from time to time. We’re going to do our absolute best to clean that up and not be in it, but that’s just part of sports.”

Sawyer’s full comments:

NASCAR’s Sawyer says Loudon’s wet race was ‘very successful’

When NASCAR rolled out wet weather tires for ovals in 2023, the sanctioning body did so with hopes of being able to open the window for it to start races on time and squeak in races that could otherwise be delayed by moisture. The sanctioning body …

When NASCAR rolled out wet weather tires for ovals in 2023, the sanctioning body did so with hopes of being able to open the window for it to start races on time and squeak in races that could otherwise be delayed by moisture.

The sanctioning body is still new in the process, but it felt like it had successful examples of both scenarios at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Both Saturday’s Xfinity Series race and Sunday’s Cup Series race were impacted by rain and the use of wet weather tires. The Xfinity race began on wets due to rain, while the Cup field was able to squeeze in the final 82 scheduled laps on wets after mid-race showers stalled Sunday’s USA Today 301.

After reaching the scheduled conclusion of both races, NASCAR deemed its latest wet weather trials a success.

“I think the way we started this whole wet weather tire process was, basically, we wanted to get our races started on time,” Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, said after the race. “It really played into our hand yesterday to get the Xfinity race started on time, and to get our races back to green as quick as possible if we had a delay, which we had today.

“Kudos to Goodyear. This was Jim France’s vision of what wet weather tires could do. We ran 301+ laps today, went into overtime. Our fans that bought a ticket got to see some great, exciting racing.”

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NASCAR’s unique wet weather format still leaves many questions. Series officials have yet to allow teams to choose when to take slicks or wets, mandating stops for either. Teams were forced to pit twice for new wets in the final stages of Sunday’s race. Pit stops are also noncompetitive – a move made in the name of safety on a wet pit road.

It can make for a jarring visual for fans of other series like Formula 1 and the NTT IndyCar Series, where changing for wet or dry tires is often part of an active race. NASCAR claims it’s being cautious as it continues to learn. Sunday’s race was only the third that the Cup field has contested with wet tires, following the 2023 All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway and this spring’s trip to Richmond Raceway.

“There’s still some things that we’re learning through this process,” Sawyer admitted. “In all honesty, we’d like to be out of the tire business. We’d like to just turn that over to the teams, but we continue to take small steps and we learn. Eventually we’ll get there; we just want to do this in the safest way possible.

“Once we get back to the R&D Center, we start downloading exactly how this race unfolded” Sawyer later added. ”We’ll get back and we’ll look at all the things that transpired today and if we should have got on dries. The more we looked at it, I think staying on wets was the right decision to end the race.“

While the current format has its flaws, NASCAR still feels it’s been successful in early trials. Without wet weather tires, Sawyer admitted that Sunday’s race would “have been done with 82 laps to go.”

Instead, it reached the scheduled distance and even made it through overtime.

That’s a successful outing in Sawyer’s eyes.

“If you go back and look at the reason we came up with this and we started working through it with the teams and the folks at the R&D Center, it was to do exactly what we did yesterday in the Xfinity race and what we did today with the Cup race,” Sawyer said. “So yes, very successful.”

NASCAR evaluating Iowa surface despite strong debut weekend

NASCAR has a lot to evaluate about the future of the surface of Iowa Speedway after a successful doubleheader weekend. The track had a sold-out weekend, the NASCAR Cup series race being a long-awaited inaugural event at the facility. Ryan Blaney won …

NASCAR has a lot to evaluate about the future of the surface of Iowa Speedway after a successful doubleheader weekend.

The track had a sold-out weekend, the NASCAR Cup series race being a long-awaited inaugural event at the facility. Ryan Blaney won Sunday night’s race, and it’s a race that is receiving positive reviews.

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But going into the weekend, there were doubts about the surface since many were taken by surprise when NASCAR chose to repave sections of the corners to address what they described as problem areas. Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, said there was no anticipation of issues, and he was proven to be correct. Although the aesthetic of the repave garnered criticism, it was not a factor during the weekend’s three races (the ARCA Menards Series ran Friday night).

“We had great racing,” Sawyer said Tuesday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “We had side by side (racing). We had two lanes. So, I’m sure we’ll have a lot of dialogue around if we go back do you repave the whole facility? Do you just repave that third lane up by the wall? A lot of questions to answer on that.

“But I think the No. 1 thing is we had really, really good racing this past weekend. No matter what we do, we need to make sure we’re heading in a positive direction to make the racing better or to leave it as is and have another data point after next year.”

The industry is still waiting on the 2025 schedule, however, given the positive reception to NASCAR’s presence at Iowa Speedway, there are high hopes and expectations of returning. It’s a market and fan base that the drivers have praised for being passionate and deserving of a race, and there is no reason to believe NASCAR wouldn’t return next season.

Iowa speedway was built in 2006 and aside from the repaved corners, still has its original surface.

“We went into the weekend with a lot of unknowns,” Sawyer said. “As I said last week, our goal going into Iowa when we announced it last October, was not to repave. We wanted to get that first race on that old pavement and kind of get a data point, but that just wasn’t the case. Some areas needed some attention and we did that, and we have what we had there this past weekend.”