Elton Sawyer joined SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday to discuss restarts at the Indy Road Course following the success of single-file restarts at Chicago.
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00:00 All right, Elton, so let's look at Indianapolis this weekend.
00:04 First off, the restart zone.
00:07 You all had implemented at Chicago the restart zone, got moved back before that final corner.
00:11 We're going to see that again in Indianapolis.
00:13 What is the hope there?
00:15 I know, you know, to try to get these drivers spread out.
00:18 Do you feel like that will be the case in Indianapolis and it will kind of alleviate
00:22 the carnage that we've seen in Turn 1?
00:24 Well, Kelly, that's a good point.
00:27 Good question.
00:28 I would look at it from this standpoint.
00:30 We have one data point by relocating the restart zones and we go clean back to Chicago.
00:37 I thought our drivers and athletes did a great job there.
00:40 Obviously, we dealt with weather there as well, so we were single-file restarts.
00:46 And the start of the race was single-file there just due to the fact that it was, you
00:50 know, we had wet conditions.
00:52 So the goal, as you mentioned, would be to, you know, clean up the carnage in Turn 1.
01:00 So by backing it up, giving the guys the opportunity to get going, maybe the first two or three
01:06 rows, you know, they've earned the opportunity to have a little bit of an advantage and we
01:10 want to give them that.
01:12 We will start the weekend as we do every weekend with double-file restarts.
01:17 And if things happen that we feel like we need to call an audible, then go to single-file.
01:22 We have the ability to do that.
01:24 But our race fans, over time, have come to really enjoy double-file restarts.
01:29 We don't want to take that away unless there's a real need to do that.
01:33 So the goal is, yes, to hopefully eliminate some of the carnage in Turn 1.
01:39 I felt like we accomplished that at Chicago.
01:43 And the goal is to do the same here.
01:45 And then we will also look, as we move forward, Watkins Glen, we've been fortunate in the
01:51 past, the way that racetrack lays out, there will be no change at Watkins Glen.
01:56 Restart zone will be located in the same place it was in 2022.
02:01 And really no restrictions on that one.
02:04 And then we'll reassess as we get to Charlotte and the Roval in the next three or four weeks
02:11 here on what we need to do there as well.