NASCAR had an adventurous weekend, one that ran about six hours long for the Cup Series race on Sunday thanks to the presence of some pretty serious weather. Needless to say the sport’s reasonably new wet weather tires were a big topic of discussion.
The organization made the call to break out the wet weather tires with about 82 laps to go following a significant halt for rain.
It was a move that Elton Sawyer, the senior vice president of competition for NASCAR, said ultimately saved the race. Had wet weather tires not been available, the race would have been called with 82 laps to go.
So overall, Sawyer was thrilled with how the weekend finished.
“Well I think the way we started this whole wet weather tire process was basically we wanted to get our races started on time, and it really played into our hand yesterday getting the Xfinity race started on time,” Sawyer said, via FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass. “And to get our races back to green as quick as possible if we had a delay, which we had today. Kudos to Goodyear.”
There were multiple cautions in the final 82 laps, naturally, but more of the consternation was about the wet weather tire process. NASCAR kept teams from changing tires to a new set at certain points before mandating a change later in the race.
It left many drivers frustrated that they weren’t allowed to set their own strategy.
However, the race was completed at the end of the day. There’s certainly something to be said for that.
“Again, this was Jim France‘s vision of what wet weather tires could do,” Sawyer said. “We ran 301-plus laps today, so it went into the overtime. Our fans that bought a ticket, they got to see some great, exciting racing.”
The good news for the drivers is that eventually days like today won’t be quite as rigid in terms of the moves drivers are able to make with their tires. NASCAR plans to throw the decisions to the teams at some point.
First, though, they want a more sufficient amount of data to ensure safety for all and a quality product for the fans.
“There’s still some things that we’re learning through this process,” Sawyer said. “In all honestly, we’d like to be out of the tire business. We’d like to just turn that over to the teams. But as we continue to take small steps and we learn, eventually we’ll get there. We just wanted to do this in the safest way possible.”
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