Tragedy NASCAR comments after largest crash in the history of the sport killing 3 racers and

 

Over the weekend, NASCAR raced on the 2.5-mile of Talladega Superspeedway. The playoff race ended with a fleet of tow trucks.

With just 5 laps to go, Austin Cindric was turned backwards into turn three. He was leading at the time of the crash.

That required the entire field to drive through a spinning racecar. In total, 28 cars were involved in the crash. That made it the largest crash in NASCAR history.

Up to the point of that crash, there were very few incidents and most of the cars remained in the race. So, when aggression caused a big pile up at the end of the race, nearly everyone was involved.

However, nobody went upside down. NASCAR implemented new parts to the cars ahead of the race at Talladega. Those parts were installed specifically to help cars stay on the ground in the event they are turned sideways or backwards.

“A lot of work went into that,” Elton Sawyer stated via Sirius XM NASCAR Radio.

“We’ve had our situations over the Summer and even Michigan a couple weeks ago. Any time we can leave the superspeedways and all the vehicles stayed upright, that’s a positive.”

“But, as we’ve said before, the safety part of our sport and our cars, that’s a journey. It’s not a destination. We’ll continue to work on our facilities and our cars. If there’s parts and pieces and bits that we can add to the car that aesthetically look good and are efficient at keeping the vehicles on the ground then obviously we’re going to continue to look on that.”

“I would say we checked the box at Talladega but we’ll have another opportunity here in a few months when we get to Daytona to continue to work on that.”

Lift system

At Michigan, NASCAR launched the internal lift system. The system was designed to help cars with flat tires get back to the pits without picking up extra damage.

“It’s a learning process there. Early in the race with the with the No. 99 car that spun, the system really worked well,” Sawyer stated.

“Once you have a car in the grass, there’s a multitude of things there. It can be challenging. There’s things that we have to continue to look at. You learn from every situation. Because they are different.”

“The lift system, we’re encouraged by it. I don’t believe that is a fix-all, just yet.”

DVP policy likely to change in 2025

With such a large crash, the infield of Talladega turned into a parking lot. And in the middle of the playoffs, drivers were in a battle for a tow truck. Some drivers got it, other’s did not

Changes are likely coming to aid that situation…

“In the off-season, we will take a much deeper dive into the damage vehicle policy and see what it looks like in 2025, Sawyer added.

“To basically be able to put a lot more back on the race teams to be able to control their own destiny. A small list of parts and piece that they may be able to change. That’s different than what we have today.