A 23-car crash created chaos at the end of Sunday’s Cup playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway, but the resulting red flag and then yellow flag caused confusion for competitors.
Josh Berry emerged from the infield care center after the incident and proclaimed: “All I know is that all those cars in Turn 3 better not get towed to pit road, buddy, because that would be breaking the Damaged Vehicle Policy.”
“Forty-two cars over there doing burnouts, slinking rubber all over the safety workers trying to get going. If you have four flat tires and you got to get towed to pit road, you’re done, right?”
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Facing so many cars in Sunday’s incident, NASCAR’s action caused some questions.
NASCAR towed Chase Elliott, whose car hit the inside barrier, and Chase Briscoe, who spun after he was hit, to pit road and they continued. Elliott finished 29th. Briscoe placed 30th. Elliott holds the final transfer spot to the third round entering next weekend’s elimination race at the Charlotte Roval.
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Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, explained how officials responded in trying to get the cars back into competition that could continue.
“First and foremost, our goal is never to put good cars out of the race,” he said, referring to cars that could continue. “When we developed (the Damaged Vehicle Policy) … that’s never been the goal.
“Based on our experiences last week at Kansas (with Berry) … we felt like, yeah, we probably could have made a different call there. We had a good car that probably just needed tires last week.
“As we went into this week, we wanted to err on the side of the competitor. Again, we don’t want to put good cars out of the race. We had a situation in Turn 3 where we’ve got 25-plus cars down there. We’re not sure why they can’t continue. We don’t know if it’s strictly because they’re in the grass (or) they’re high-sided. So for us to make a determination that they’ve got some suspension damage and can’t continue, that puts a lot on us.
“Once we got (Briscoe) and (Elliott) back to pit road, they made their small repairs that they can make on pit road and went out and met minimum speed. So we felt like we made the right call there.”
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Sawyer went on to say: “Every circumstance is different. We’re going to do our absolute best to make the best calls with the best information we have in front of us.”
— NBC Sports —