TALLADEGA, Ala. – In the wake of Kurt Busch’s criticism of the way Sunday’s 1000Bulbs.com 500 was officiated during its overtime finish, a NASCAR executive has explained the sanctioning body’s reasoning behind allowing the race to finish under green.
NASCAR EVP and Chief Racing Development Officer Steve O’Donnell joined SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s The Morning Drive on Monday to review the final lap of Cup Series action at Talladega Superspeedway, in which a multi-car accident involving Matt DiBenedetto, Chase Elliott and others in turn one broke out as the leaders stormed for the finish.
Had NASCAR called a yellow for the incident, the field would have been frozen at the moment of caution and the race would have been over at that point, since the leader had already taken the white flag under racing conditions.
However, no yellow was called for, Busch ultimately ran out of fuel off the fourth corner and Aric Almirola slipped by to take home his first victory in more than four years.
The end of Sunday’s race was in stark contrast to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race one day earlier, which ended under yellow after a similar last-lap crash involving leader Noah Gragson was sparked on the backstretch. Timothy Peters won that contest.
“What we had were two different races, and every race is different,” O’Donnell said. “Every call is a judgment call. The (incident) on Saturday was in front of the field, you saw a couple of wheels get off the ground, and any time you’re going to have more and more of the field driving into that caution, we felt the need in that case to throw the caution. We always want to try to end under green, but in that case we just felt like we couldn’t.
“Then on Sunday, very similar in terms of a car hitting the wall but where it happened was different and in terms of where the field was. The 32 car (DiBenedetto) then kept rolling, which is certainly a sign for us that we’re OK to keep going. The 9 car (of Elliott) … where it stopped (on the grass inside the turn) was right in front of our safety vehicles, and we also had communication from the tower that that car was in good shape, so we elected to not throw the caution and finish under green.”
Though Busch called into question NASCAR’s handling of safety in the incident, O’Donnell stressed that the well-being of the drivers involved in the crash was NASCAR’s first priority.
“You could say in this case that could have gone either way, and it could have. I talked to Matt (DiBenedetto) after the race and he was supportive of the call and understood,” O’Donnell noted. “Our first job is to always make sure everybody is safe, and we felt we did that in this case.
“We’ll certainly go back and review it, as we always do, but we stand by the call and thought it was the right one.”
