NASCAR official Elton Sawyer explains lengthy Martinsville review process, Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain, and Austin Dillon’s roles
Elton Sawyer spoke to reporters about NASCAR penalizing Christopher Bell at the Martinsville Cup Series Playoff Race. The NASCAR official talked about why the review process at the end of the race took a long time.
“We look at all the video,” Elton Sawyer said, per Matt Weaver of Sportsnaut. “If you go back to two years ago when we had the situation with Ross [Chastain] here, we went to Phoenix, there was a lot of dialogue with the drivers. That’s not a move that we want to have to make on the last lap. We were able to get through Phoenix and had a great championship race that year.
“In the offseason, meet with the industry, meet with our drivers, and to a man that was not that they want to have to make. There was language in the rulebook. When you look at it today, clearly got up against the fence there in [Turn] 3 and 4 and rode the fence all the way in 4 there.
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NASCAR’s Elton Sawyer shares more on Christopher Bell’s wall-riding move at Martinsville
Sawyer, who is NASCAR’s vice president of competition was then asked about the roles of Chastain, Bubba Wallace and Austin Dillon‘s during the final lap with Bell. “The situations going on with 23 (Wallace) and the cars behind the 24 (William Byron) really have no bearing at this time. We’ll look at those at a later time. When you really just dissect exactly what happened, look at the situation with the 20 (Bell) hitting up against the fence and riding the fence, we clearly stated in our statement after Ross did that would not be accepted.”
Bell did everything he could to get enough points to clinch a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race (or Championship 4). After Bell did the wall-riding move, it created a points tie with him and Byron. Bell got the tie-breaker since he had a higher finish in the Round of 8, but NASCAR penalized Bell for the move, leading to Byron joining Martinsville winner Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano and Tyler Reddick to compete for the Cup Series title next week.