What's Best Way For NASCAR To Accomplish Goal?

By ESPN

NASCAR says it wants to make every attempt to finish a race under green with its overtime-line procedure.

That makes sense. But the question is: What is the best way to accomplish that goal? Is it to let the wrecks play out and see if there really is a need to throw the caution -- as NASCAR did at the end of the Brickyard 400 on Sunday. Or should it have a quick trigger to make sure the caution comes out before the leaders cross the overtime line and therefore requiring another restart attempt?

NASCAR executive vice president Steve O'Donnell was quite clear on what NASCAR prefers -- it will not have the quick trigger.

"We want to make the attempt [to finish under green], but we want to do that under the regular regulations of how we call," O'Donnell said. "So we look at that as our last attempt. We look at each one as our last attempt. If it can play out, it can play out."

NASCAR's regular regulations are to try to let it play out more so on the final laps than at other times during the race. That appeared evident on what was the final lap of the Brickyard 400, where Kasey Kahne was leading and cars were wrecking behind him before he got to the overtime line.

"We're going to make every attempt to finish the race under green," O'Donnell said. "To do that, you have to see what happened with an incident. In this case, we did that.

"Once we decided to throw the caution, when we want to dispatch emergency equipment, [we] also knew there was oil on the racetrack. We threw out the caution and ultimately that's the end of the race."

In retrospect, the race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway would not have been restarted if NASCAR threw the caution because it would have been too dark to continue.

"It didn't [factor in], but we would not have been able to restart that race," O'Donnell said. "There was oil down. It would have been another red flag. I think the last couple cautions or red flags were 15 to 20 minutes with oil."

Brad Keselowski, who finished second, said he had not seen a replay to know if NASCAR made the correct call.

"I haven't seen any replays of the last yellow to have any kind of articulate answer that I think would be fair to give," he said.

O'Donnell said NASCAR is considering eliminating the overtime line and going to back to the previous rule of one full lap to the start-finish line being the mark to get to for 2018. And it would still have unlimited attempts to accomplish that.
Xfinity Series: Byron wins again

William Byron won for the third time in six races as he captured the win at Indianapolis.

For a rookie, that's impressive. Byron said he and crew chief Dave Elenz are working well together.

"I feel like we are starting to get the confidence up between the two of us," Byron said. "That's starting to lead to a lot of success. It took a couple of weeks for us to really jell, but with his experience and my background, it's starting to come together."

As far as Byron's future possibly including a NASCAR Cup ride for next year, team owner Rick Hendrick was noncommittal.

"He's definitely going to be in the Xfinity car," Hendrick said. "We're not ready to cross that bridge yet."
Camping World Truck Series: Friesen gets boost at Eldora

Stewart Friesen won the pole and finished second at Eldora, not bad at all for a driver whose team skipped Gateway and Iowa to regroup. He will go to Pocono this week and then determine the approach for the rest of the season.

"It's kind of race to race right now," Friesen said. "We took those two weeks off to rebuild and to regroup. We came to Kentucky and just tried to be smooth and have an uneventful race and everything went good and we had 12th place, so that was cool but not really where we want to be.

"We want to be in the top 10 and a little bit more in contention."

Friesen, whose family has owned racetracks and has modified roots, also has experience sprint-car racing. Last year, subbing for his wife (and sprint-car team owner), Jessica, as she was pregnant, he won a World of Outlaws race.

"We had success and enjoyed the sprint car, and when Jess was pregnant, to be able to race her car with her crew chief and win with the Outlaws at Ohsweken [in Ontario], that was probably one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life," he said.

So why try NASCAR?

"The premier level of racing is NASCAR -- we're trying to build something and that's kind of what the goals are right now, to try to be able to compete at this level," Friesen said. "It's been a challenge but it's been a lot of fun, too."