NASCAR Executive Addresses Daytona 500 Ending Under Caution, How They Determined Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Won

Elton Sawyer, Senior Vice President of Competition at NASCAR, addressed the finish lines for the Daytona 500 as well as the Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner. 300 for the Xfinity Series.

The Daytona 500 was stopped by Kyle Larson, who spun out and crashed into the wall nose first. Brad Keselowski, who crashed into the wall and crumpled his car’s front bumper, was also part of the wreckage.

During the race commentator Mike Joy explained how NASCAR would decide who won the race between Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and  Joey Logano.

He said: “It is not the flag. It is not the caution lights. It is NASCAR’s decision as to where those two cars were when the button was pushed to activate the caution.” NASCAR determined that Stenhouse Jr. was leader and was awarded the win.

After the race was over, Sawyer addressed the end. “I think, first and foremost, Pete and Mike, we want to finish the event under green flag conditions. That’s our number one goal. And as you look back on the history of our sport, you know, at some point you have to — you go into overtime. And we have unlimited attempts at that. And something starts the process and something will end the process.”

“And the way we’ve defined that is once you take the white flag then the next flag will end it. If we haven’t taken the white flag, as you alluded to earlier, we’ll rerack them and do that as many times as we need to. But once the white flag has been displayed to the leader then the next flag will end the event,” He elaborated.

Sawyer went on. “As we saw on Saturday we are trying to do our best in the tower to make sure we can get cars back to the start/finish line, but when you have an accident and you have a vehicle upside down like we did with Sam Mayer then we have to throw the caution. We have to start dispatching safety equipment and get to the scene as quick as we possibly can. So we need vehicles to slow down.”

“So once all of that was in place then we go back — and we needed to get it right,” He stated. “It didn’t need to be a decision that we made in the tower fast. It was a decision that we needed to get right. So we used all available resources as we do when we’re paying points and money. We would have done the same thing at the end of a stage to make sure we got it correct.”

The video was there as we were looking through it. The time stamp was there when the caution came out. You then attach that to the video. The 21 of Austin Hill was closest, and then it became 20. That’s the essence of the whole process.

Fast forward to Sunday. We were in the same spot on Sunday. And we had to do the same thing again. After you have cars involved in an accident, such as the one that killed the 5, the 6 and other victims in the Sunday accident. We need to speed up the dispatch of emergency vehicles and vehicles to slow down.

Then he concluded: “Kind of walks you through, you know, all three events over the weekend were unique and had their challenges, but was really proud of our team and the support that we got in the tower from being able to make the right decisions on all those calls.”

Logano led the race before Larson wrecked. But Stenhouse Jr. did manage to get to the bottom. Logano was already passed by Stenhouse, Jr.

As Mike Joy pointed out during live coverage, it all depends upon when NASCAR issued the caution.

What do YOU think Sawyer’s comments regarding the Daytona 500’s ending?

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