A NASCAR senior executive suggested Monday that series officials could have delayed opening pit road by a lap in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Iowa Speedway to avoid the incident Dillon Bassett had with a sweeper.
Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s chief racing development officer, made the comments Monday on “The Morning Drive” on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
“You look at the circumstance on our end of what happened,” O’Donnell said. “You saw a number of cars able to pass the sweeper. We had a conversation with the driver (Bassett). There was some lack of communication I would say with the spotter on the team side. We’ll correct that. The team will correct that.
“But then on our end, you look at the circumstances there. It’s one thing to be parked, which we’ve had many times and it’s worked successfully. It’s another when you look at kind of the smoke or fog, I guess, that was created.
“I think in that instance, you learn from it, you maybe keep pit road closed one more lap and don’t try to get back to green as fast. Always a challenge for us because we want to make the fans happy and get back racing as quickly as possible but in that case you could probably wait one more lap. We’ll go back and continue to look at the film and make adjustments.”
— NBC Sports —