“Its on Me”- NASCAR’s Senior VP Comes Clean on Overnight Phoenix Fix After Truck Series Highlights Colossal Flaw

While the NASCAR bonanza ended with a bang, concluding with epic feats across its 3 major divisions, the finale at Phoenix Raceway also highlighted the organization’s blaring flaw that got NASCAR on the back foot. Friday’s Truck Series race, which got the reputation for being one of the most chaotic races in recent times with drivers going balls to the walls with utter disrespect, also saw the organization’s gaffe exposed to the community.

In the aftermath of the infamous race and the blunder being in front of the whole wide world, the sanctioning body had to step in to clean up the mess and address the infamous debacle. Speaking to NASCAR’s official radio channel, Elton Sawyer, the organization’s senior vice president of competition, took the fall for the anomaly, relaying the obvious to the NACAR nation.

NASCAR VP admits the blaring Phoenix flaw as the former driver details Friday’s incident

Besides the carnage that ensued inside the track on Friday with truckers taking things to the edge, beating and banging each other to the finish line, the Truck Series finale at Phoenix Raceway also saw NASCAR’s grave error firsthand. The field was ever more aggressive, with drivers beating and banging each other unapologetically.

The race went into 4 overtimes in the closing laps, causing pandemonium. While the organization levied hefty penalties on Corey Heim for his alleged intention to wreck Carson Hocevar, who initiated the tussle when he bumped the #11 Toyota with just 31 laps to go, the racing community was waiting for an official explanation of the bizarre restart anomaly.

The restart zone was improperly placed. For Friday’s Truck Series, the restart zone was not in the correct spot on the track. With little time to fix the issue, NASCAR had to go ahead with the improper restart zone. Even though the teams were informed prior and it didn’t appear to be that much of an issue, it’s still a slip that shouldn’t have happened, especially for such a high-stakes finale.

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Speaking SiriusXM NASCAR, Sawyer opened up, saying, “So what we do, we’ll take pit road speed, and just for example if it’s 45 miles an hour, we’ll do an equation it can be times two or times four or times six, so, right now we’re in a times four equation, so you do the math that’s 180 feet length from the start of the double rail lines to the end of the restart zone.” 

Reflecting on the flaw, the VP took the blame on himself, determined to never repeat it again. He said, “So, long story short, it’s on me and my team to make sure this never happens again. And we will, we’ll go through how we got there what we need to do to fix it and why it won’t happen again. That gives the viewers a kind of 20,000-foot view of why it was that way on Friday night. So overnight we corrected that, the restart zone for Saturday’s Xfinity and Sunday’s Cup Series race, was the location was exactly where it was in 2022 championship weekend.”

The VP breaks his silence on the infamous stint in Phoenix

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The NASCAR community was in fact taken aback by such a show of disrespect among drivers at such a crucial moment of the tournament. While the sanctioning body is all in on the idea of aggressive racing, in no way could they or the drivers justify their actions. And following the chaos, the NASCAR community, including drivers and veterans, brutally thrashed the young truckers for embarrassing the sport.

Denny Hamlin, and his JGR teammate, Martin Truex Jr, all doubled down on the incident, denouncing it as unprofessional and unethical. Sawyer also opened up, speaking his mind. He said, “It’s unfortunate that the race unfolded at the end the way it did. We hold all of our series, especially the national series and drivers to a much higher standard. I will say, not to make excuses, some of them are young, they should know better at this point in their careers. it takes zero talent to just go in there and wreck people, anybody can do that.”

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