A crash on the final lap of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway led to NASCAR displaying the caution flag, which froze the field and essentially ended what was shaping up to be an epic three-wide battle for the race win between Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, and Carson Hocevar.
While it felt controversial when you factor in that NASCAR has been allowing the leaders to race back to the finish line despite crashes on the final lap beginning with last Sunday’s Daytona 500 — a decision made to counteract an incorrect call to throw the caution a few hundred feet before the finish in one of the Duel Qualifers at Daytona the Thursday prior.
On this week’s episode of Hauler Talk, an official NASCAR Podcast which breaks down on-track rulings from the perspective of NASCAR, Amanda Ellis, Mike Forde, and Nate Ryan give some great perspective on things.
First things first, it should be noted that NASCAR made the correct call on Sunday at Atlanta. No, that’s not me being a shill for NASCAR, that’s simply what NASCAR’s Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer told drivers would happen if there was a crash on the final lap at Atlanta in Sunday morning’s driver’s meeting. Sawyer was reacting to a non-caution call at the end of the Xfinity Series race on Saturday, which was seen as a glaring safety issue.
“Then my last comment will be based on last night’s race,” Sawyer told drivers in the meeting. “Our goal is to finish our races under green conditions. That’s our number one goal. But we’re also not going to be racing through a debris field. So, you can expect cautions to come out based on last night. That was on us.”
Ellis was in the NASCAR Race Control tower on Saturday and Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and she explains that the sanctioning body simply got the call wrong on Saturday. A lot of it has to do with how chaotic things are in the tower as a race is on the final lap.
“I was in race control. An end of a race moves very quickly, when we had Austin Hill cross the finish line, you knew you had a wreck as well,” Ellis said. “And there’s, if you’ve ever, I know Forde you’ve been in race control, but there’s a lot of moving parts that really kick into play and start taking place. We’re dispatching equipment. We’re also trying to capture the field. You’re trying to bring the field down pit road. Then you move into a technical inspection. So, there’s just a lot of things that are happening in those moments.”
While trying to sort things out, the crash broke out, and Ellis admits that at first glance, the crash didn’t seem to be overly severe. But once the race had concluded, and additional views of the crash became available, it was clear a mistake was made by not throwing the caution and freezing the field.
“And honestly, I’m not afraid to admit, I didn’t think that the last lap wreck was that bad [initially],” Ellis said. “I recognize watching the replays and kind of seeing some of the vantage points we have in hindsight, I do understand why we feel like we should have thrown the caution, and we said that’s on us.”
Ellis says that the additional replays combined with concerns raised by a couple of drivers, who called NASCAR officials following Saturday night’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race, led to a shift in philosophy within race control on Sunday.
While the sanctioning body ultimately ruled things on the final lap exactly the way they laid out to drivers that they would, many fans were confused and angered by the way the race played out due to recent races, including the Daytona 500 being called differently.
Fans took to social media to voice their displeasure, and Forde says he fully understood as there was a better than zero chance that several fans hadn’t had a chance to hear an official update from NASCAR on how Race Control would call the race on Sunday.
“And there was obviously a wildfire on social media following that because of the seeming inconsistency from the previous day and week. All fair, I think,” Forde explained. “I think if fans didn’t have social media, didn’t have X, weren’t on their computers looking up [NBC Sports’ website] and reading Dustin Long’s story, they probably did not know about this and didn’t realize this was going to even be a change. So, I get it. I get the anger and the disappointment.”
If you would like to listen to the episode of Hauler Talk, here is a player, where you can listen to the show in its entirety:
