NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition says competitors and fans alike can expect the final lap of races to be officiated the way it was on Sunday night moving forward in terms of cautions that could potentially end a race before the leaders get to the finish line.
It’s been a challenging week for race control, which admitted that officials got the race ending caution at the end of the second Daytona Duel and the end of the Xfinity Series race on Saturday wrong. Moving forward, NASCAR will more likely that not end the race under caution if there is an incident that very clearly warrants it based on safety conditions.
Sawyer made the comments on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio during his weekly segment on Tuesday morning. He emphasized safety as the priority.
“If you look at our sport over 76 years, we have made tremendous gains in our facilities as far as SAFER Barriers and our cars and trucks are safer than they’ve ever been, our driver restraint systems, all the work that’s gone into seat mounting and foam and things of that nature,” Sawyer said. “So, our sport is much safer today than it has ever been. But still, it’s an inherently dangerous sport.
“We’re racing cars and trucks at 180-plus miles an hour. There is an element of danger. We were a little aggressive — and this is on us in the Xfinity Race on Saturday night — should have thrown that caution. But in an effort to give our fans a green flag finish that they pay for, there’s a balance between entertainment, competition and the safety element.”
Sawyer admitted on Sunday during the drivers meeting prior to the Cup Series race that NASCAR made a mistake in allowing the field to drive through a debris field from a crash that was triggered from just outside the top-five. He assured drivers, based on their feedback, that the caution would wave in the name of safety moving forward.
“There were still a lot of cars still behind them,” Sawyer said. “If we don’t throw the caution, you’re incentivizing the competitors to drive through that.
“If you look back over the last week or so, and the nine superspeedway races that we’ve had had if you count our Duels and our ARCA race, everybody is on top of each other at the finish so the element of a last lap caution is there as we’ve seen.
“It’s on the sanctioning body (and) it’s on our side to make sure that we do our absolute best … It’s our goal to get to the start-finish line under green. But there are conditions and situations where we need to throw that and we’re going to err more on throwing it than not.”
Sawyer also said it’s just a challenge for race directors to make anything resembling the ideal call that satisfies both safety and entertainment because it’s such a split second decision.
“It can’t be a collaborative effort in a decision there,” Sawyer said. “You don’t have time to call time out and (figure out) do you want to call it or not call it. That’s just not the way to do that. We’ve had meetings with our race directors and I think they have a true understanding now after Saturday night exactly how we want to do this.”
Sawyer used the analogy that it’s like a quarterback being in the pocket preparing to throw a pass.
“There’s a clock in your head that starts to wind down and you either got to throw a pass or the pocket is going to collapse,” Sawyer said. “As a race director, as the cars or trucks come off Turn 2 and you start to get halfway down the back straightaway and you start to get into Turn 3, that clock starts speeding up to where you have to make a decision and it’s a split-second decision whether you hold it and let them race back or do you throw the caution?
“We had met with a few of our Cup drivers on Sunday morning and they of the mindset that we need to throw that in those situations. Again, we want to get to a green flag finish for our fans, but hopefully our fans understand the reason why we have to do it the way we did and the way we will going forward.”
NASCAR used to implement an overtime line on the backstretch of superspeedway races, used on the first lap of a green-white-checkered finish but races devolved into a series of crash fests under that format and that policy was prohibited.
Could they look at the overtime line or a new green-checkered policy?
“Absolutely and we’ll start with that and we’ll look at all of those situations,” Sawyer said. “Again, we’ve been in business a long time. We’ve had the line on the back straightaway at the superspeedways and to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure why we got away from that.
“I’m sure there was a good reason that didn’t work as we had hoped. We’ll take a deeper dive to be able to assure a green flag finish as well as (provide) safety (for) all competitors and fans alike. So yes, we would definitely take a look.
“We have some ideas ourselves but all these ideas that are coming in, we’ll put them on the agenda as well and just try to make sure we get to the best place there. And there’s always the negative unintended consequences that come with a change so we need to make sure we vet through all that before we actually make a change.”
