NASCAR officials do not want to be in the position of calling the number of ‘ball or strike’ decisions they did over the weekend at Circuit of the Americas but ultimately are not sure what other options are available.
Race control issued 40 penalties for corner cutting the esses across all three national touring races, Trucks, Xfinity and Cup, because that is the only real deterrent in the absence of cubing or turtles.
NASCAR’s Senior Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer, agreed that the number of penalties took away from the racing product in a way that is making the sanctioning body evaluate how it officiates road courses like the one in Austin.
“COTA is very challenging,” Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday. “I would rather go to Daytona, Talladega, or Atlanta every day of the week from the officiating standpoint. We’re calling balls and strikes on every lap and that’s not really where we want to be.
“I commend our team in the tower, I thought they did a good job, but it’s way too much about us and not enough about the athletes, and our teams, and our pit stops and strategy and things of that nature.”
There was even one applied to the end of the Xfinity Series race against Shane van Gisbergen, who was involved in the race for the win against Kyle Larson and Austin Hill. Penalties were also notably called against Chase Elliott, AJ Allmendinger, Justin Allgaier, Ed Jones, Hill, Matt Crafton, Connor Zilisch, Stefan Parsons and Tyler Anrkum.
Sawyer says NASCAR will look at other deterrence means, be it a different penalty or some curbing that serves as a natural deterrent, so that the spotlight isn’t on race control.
Speaking of, COTA, NASCAR is also largely working with the expectation that it will return next year but its not a certainty yet.
“Some work to be done, not sure where the announcement is, if we will or will not be going back to COTA in [2025],” Sawyer added. “But we’re preparing today – and have been since basically we started the weekend – about what we can do going forward with the facility, and how we would officiate it, and what the deterrent looks like.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.