NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer responded to the pointed criticism Kyle Busch sent the sanctioning body’s way after he was parked during the Daytona 500 after he was caught up in a wreck that started with Joey Logano and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Upon exiting the infield care center, Busch told members of the media, “Got beat by NASCAR procedures again. Just not being able to get out on the racetrack.”

When asked if he should have been able to work on the car by Fox’s Bob Pockrass, Busch replied, “I had four flat tires out there and we have these air jack systems in the car — mandatory by NASCAR — and the guy carries around an empty air bottle to plug up to the car. So couldn’t plug it up to make my own return to pit road. Instead, 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 were 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 was told that if you need to work on it and repair, you need 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?”

Kyle Busch: “Screwed by NASCAR procedures again.” pic.twitter.com/b4LzuMb2Iu

— Matt Weaver (@MattWeaverRA) February 17, 2025

He reiterated that on On X, Busch wrote, “Parked by NASCAR officials. Rule says you have 3 attempts to make minimum speed. The race never went back green yet. I don’t even think they know their own rules or procedures.”

During an appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Ch. 90 Sawyer discussed Busch’s comments saying, “I think it was a misunderstanding on Kyle’s point there from his perspective. Just to try to keep it as simple as I can to explain this. What we do on pit road as far as the damaged vehicle policy (DVP)  hasn’t changed from ’24 other than were given an additional minute. It’s now seven minutes instead of six. … The DVP policy looks the same on pit road with the adjustments that I mentioned.”

However, he then noted, “The one thing that we added this year is at the scene of the incident if you can’t drive away we would hook to 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, 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.”

Sawyer then specifically addressed Busch’s case, “In Kyle’s case he went out, left the garage, came back in, and once you do that you’re going to be eliminated from the event.”

He then explained why the rule is in place, “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 into the garage, work on their car a little bit, go back out, run one lap, come back in. They would do that multiple times. That’s just kind of circumventing the purpose of the rule. I think it was clearly just a misunderstanding.”

What do you make of Sawyer’s explanation?

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