Elton Sawyer, senior VP of competition, breaks down the decision to penalize the move Christopher Bell made on the final lap at Martinsville.
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00:00One driver that was not in contention for the championship for was the 20 of Christopher Bell.
00:04He got a safety violation. Can you walk me through NASCAR's decision?
00:07Yeah, Alex, if you go back a couple of years ago now, when we had this situation with the
00:11one car on the last lap riding the wall, we've met with the industry. We met with the drivers
00:16and everyone to a man decided that that was not something that we could tolerate. We didn't want
00:22that move to be accepted. We had language in the rulebook. It is a safety violation.
00:28And when we saw the 20 car, that's exactly where we went. We looked at it a couple of
00:33different times just to make sure. And, you know, that was the call looking at it.
00:38How similar or how different was it from the one of Ross Justine two seasons ago?
00:43Yeah, I think when you look at their, their, their, their different in this,
00:47from the standpoint that they are different, right? It's two different situations.
00:51I think they're very similar in the fact that we had two cars that rode the wall
00:55was in the gas. And when you look at that, it is a safety violation and that's to,
01:00to protect our competitors as well as our fans.
01:04And then finally, it was the 24 of William Byron that advanced to the championship four,
01:07but what did NASCAR see in those closing laps with the 24?
01:10Yeah, we watched that. We're going to take, you know, a deeper dive into that and look at the
01:14data and look at things like that. But all in all, what, you know, what a tremendous race here.
01:18Thanks to Clay Campbell and his staff. I mean, it's Martinsville cutoff race. And again,
01:23looking forward to Phoenix next week. Thank you. And we'll see you in Phoenix.