NASCAR SVP Elton Sawyer speaks out about Kyle Busch Daytona 500 controversy

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR‘s senior vice president of competition, said Tuesday that the Damaged Vehicle Policy controversy involving Kyle Busch late in Sunday’s Daytona 500 was a “misunderstanding” on Busch’s part.

Busch, involved in the multi-car wreck triggered by Joey Logano and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. with 15 laps to go, believed he could have continued in the race. NASCAR parked him in accordance with the DVP. He took aim at NASCAR while speaking to reporters in the infield, accusing race control of not understanding its new procedures.

Sawyer, speaking on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, cleared up any confusion as it pertains to the updated DVP.

“I think it was a misunderstanding on Kyle’s perspective,” Sawyer said on The Morning Drive, via Matt Weaver of Sportsnaut. “… What we do on pit road as far as the Damaged Vehicle Policy hasn’t changed from 2024 other than we’re giving an additional minute — it’s now seven minutes versus six. But as far as what our fans, and our competitors, what they witnessed last year in the past five or six years, the DVP policy looks the same on pit road with the adjustments that I mentioned.

“The one thing that we added this year is, at the scene of the incident, if you can’t drive away, we would hook the vehicle and we would tow it to the garage. Once you go to the garage, you’re going to get one opportunity to leave the garage and go on the racetrack. And this is not a new rule either — you get one opportunity at three consecutive green laps to meet minimum speed. Once you do that, you reset and you’re kind of back in the game.”

Kyle Busch rips NASCAR after massive Daytona 500 wreck

Busch claimed that when someone made it out to his No. 8 Chevrolet, they arrived with an empty tank to activate his air jack system. He instead had to get a tow back to pit road and eventually returned to the garage to get repairs to head back out and attempt to make minimum speed.

“I had four flat tires out there and we have these air-jack systems in the car, mandatory by NASCAR. And the guy carries an empty air bottle to plug up to the car,” Busch said. “So, couldn’t plug it up so I could make my own return back to pit road. Said I just wanted a push. So, they decided for three laps to figure out how to hook it up to tow us back in. Towed us into a work area where our guys reviewed the car. Looked over the car, didn’t see anything massively wrong. All the wheels pointed in the right direction. We put four new tires on it to go back out to basically see what the next process was going to be for us.

“And then told that if you need to work on it and repair it you’ve got to go back to that place. But if you go back to that place, they park you. So, what are we supposed to do to continue to work on it now that we’ve got four new tires on it and all the wheels are pointed in the right direction?”

Elton Sawyer explains reason for parking Kyle Busch

Sawyer explained that Busch headed back to the garage a second time led to his elimination from the event.

“In Kyle’s case, he went out, left the garage, came back in and once you do that, then you’re going to be eliminated from the event,” Sawyer said. “The reason that this rule was put in place the way it is was that if we didn’t have a way to basically have an end to the DVP part of it where you could reset, then what would happen is the competitors would go in the garage, work on the car a little bit, go back out, run one lap, come back in.

“They would do that multiple times, and that’s just kind of circumventing the purpose of the rules. So, I think it was clearly just a misunderstanding. We had multiple meetings in the offseason with the teams and the drivers, multiple drivers came by throughout the week and had questions about the policy and making sure that they were clear. It was unfortunate for Kyle and the RCR team because they had a really good car.”