NASCAR SVP Elton Sawyer hints at ‘ideas’ to guarantee races end under green flag

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, opened up about the governing body having more green-flag finishes at races following the controversial finish under caution at Atlanta this past weekend. While appearing on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Sawyer hinted at “ideas” to guarantee races ending under a green flag.

“Absolutely, and we’ll look at all those situations. … We’ve had the line of on the back straightaway at superspeedways. To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not sure why we got away from that. I’m sure there was a good reason that didn’t work as we had hoped. But we will take a deeper dive to basically be able to assure a green flag finish as well as the safety of all competitors and our fans alike. So, we will definitely take a look,” Sawyer said on Tuesday.

“We have some ideas ourselves that are coming in. We’ll put them on the agenda as well and just try to make sure we get to the best place there. There’s always the negative unintended consequences that come with a change, so we need to make sure we vet through all that before we actually make a change.”

Elton Sawyer shares more on green-flag finishes

During the final lap of overtime during the Atlanta race, a wreck occurred, and Christopher Bell was declared the winner as he was leading when the caution flag was thrown. In the previous week during the Daytona 500, a wreck happened during the final lap of overtime but no caution flag was thrown and William Byron won the race under a green flag.

“If you look at superspeedway races and you look at what happened Sunday night in the Cup race, that’s something you can expect going forward,” Elton Sawyer said. “And the thing is our fans — and our fans are very knowledgeable — the wreck occurs in the front of the field, then you have to look at it that you’ve got 30 vehicles still racing through that carnage or that debris field. We can’t have that. If you got two or three cars that have spun at the tail end of the field, it’s a completely different scenario. But I think the key to all of this is we’re gonna err more on the side of caution and throw it versus holding it and having a situation like we did Saturday night in the Xfinity race.”

We’ll see if a similar situation happens when NASCAR heads to Austin, Texas for the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix at the Circuit of Americas this weekend.