On Tuesday, NASCAR Cup Series Managing Director Brad Moran stopped by SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, where he spoke about a variety of topics, but the big takeaway came from Moran speaking about this past weekend’s action at the Chicago Street Course, and more specifically, the sanctioning body’s delayed decision to throw the caution after Cody Ware plowed into the Turn 6 tire barrier with two laps remaining in the Grant Park 165.
Following the event, a recorded video from the grandstands, shared by X user @MagnusCheeks, showed the severity of Ware’s impact after the driver suffered an exploded left front brake rotor heading into the sharp left-hand turn. The impact was even more severe than anyone initially imagined.
Oh my goodness, the impact for Cody Ware into the tire barrier with two laps to go is even harder and more intense than I could have imagined. Thankfully, he was able to walk away. Man… #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/B8lPGNWOjW
— Toby Christie (@Toby_Christie) July 7, 2025
Following Ware’s crash in Turn 6, his car lay motionless in the tire barrier for roughly 35 seconds, and the driver even radioed to his team that he needed help in the moments after the hard hit, before NASCAR finally issued a caution flag for the crash.
Due to the delay in calling the yellow, race leader Shane van Gisbergen was allowed to take the white flag. This meant when the caution flag did fly, it led to the field being frozen and resulted in SVG locking up the win in a yellow flag finish, which left many fans enraged.
Moran explained in his interview on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that NASCAR Race Control simply didn’t have a video angle of the initial impact for Ware, only a view of the car sitting covered by the tire barrier.
“We didn’t have the actual footage of the impact of the car getting into the tire barrier,” Moran said. “That’s something that we’re going to take back, we’re going to look at. If we go back to Chicago, we’ll be looking at certain areas of that race track, and definitely improving that situation. I believe it was 32 [seconds], now.”
Moran noted that the sanctioning body utilizes a blue flag, which serves as a “local caution” in the corners at road courses and street courses, and race control lets spotters know if there is a car in the racing line or if they are outside of the racing line.
In instances where drivers come to a stop outside of the racing line, NASCAR attempts to let the driver have a chance to drive away from the situation. However, Moran admitted that had NASCAR seen how hard the hit was, it would have forced the sanctioning body to immediately throw a caution.
“If they’re out of the racing line, we give them time, which, obviously, we did throughout the day. I think we still ended up with seven cautions for 15 laps. We do our best to try to give our fans as much time as we can to get green flag racing. However, if we had the shot of Cody’s impact, there, the caution would have come out immediately,” Moran explained.
Moran said as soon as NASCAR saw Ware drop his window net, which is an indication that he can’t drive the car back to the pit or garage, that they threw the caution flag as they understood he had not chance of driving away from the crash.
The NASCAR Cup Series Director acknowledged that it’s problematic that a driver was able to sit for half a minute after a severe crash before a caution was called to allow safety workers to tend to the driver. Moran says NASCAR will certainly come up with a plan to improve this scenario in the future.
“But it was thrown immediately when he dropped his window net. We give him the opportunity to pull out, but if we would have had that first shot, we would have known that car wasn’t pulling out. That’s on us,” Moran stated. “We’re going to go back, we’re going to review it and look at it. And if we go back to Chicago, we’ll definitely have a different plan.”
?? "If we would have had the shot […] the caution would have come out immediately."#NASCAR's Brad Moran addressed the Cody Ware crash earlier on #TMDNASCAR.
More –> https://t.co/WGRTG5gnEd pic.twitter.com/RmI4AeGqwk
— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) July 8, 2025
