Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s Senior Vice President of Competition, joined “The Morning Drive” on Sirius XM NASCAR Radio, and he talked about how NASCAR is looking into the fuel-saving tactics used at the Daytona 500. He said that NASCAR will take a “deep dive” into the strategy and potential changes. This comes after drivers complained both during and after the race about having to slow down and conserve fuel. Sawyer’s comments are below.
It is something that we’re looking into. Ultimately, we want to drop the green flag on a race and they’re racing as hard as they can until we drop the checkered flag. There’s some strategy in-between there, and we will definitely to take a much deeper dive at this particular situation and the strategy that goes into it.
Elton Sawyer
Sawyer also explained more about what made fuel saving a viable strategy at superspeedways. Ultimately, it comes down to spending less time on pit road. The more fuel that drivers save, the longer they can go and the less fuel they need to finish the stage, which means less time on pit road.
Drivers like Erik Jones, Bubba Wallace, Martin Truex Jr., and Denny Hamlin all expressed frustration at this situation both during and after the race. Drivers were racing as slow as 175 MPH in the draft in stage one because of how extreme the fuel saving was. That was slower than drivers running by themselves outside of the draft.
Fans were a bit split on the fuel-saving strategy. Some liked the extra strategy element, but, others preferred to see drivers racing throughout the day.
