NASCAR VP Clarifies Stance On Potential Chris Buescher Penalty After Todd Gilliland Crash

At the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, a collision involving Chris Buescher and Todd Gilliland sparked widespread discussion about potential penalties. However, NASCAR’s stance has been made clear by Senior VP of Competition Elton Sawyer.

Buescher’s No. 17 car had contact from Gilliland’s No. 38 car which caused both cars to crash. As Buescher rebounded from hitting the outside wall, he inadvertently caused Gilliland to spin into the wall. Despite the chaos, NASCAR decided not to penalize Buescher.

Sawyer has revealed the rationale behind this decision during an interview on Sirius XM Radio, stating, as quoted by Yardbarker.com:

“Not anything. You look at Darlington, it’s tight. It’s hard racing, we’ve said that for years.

“I don’t want our fans to get in a position thinking that we’re going to be over-officiating our races, as far as contact.

“We’re a contact sport, it’s in our DNA. What happened at Richmond, happened at Richmond, and we responded to that.

“We want our racing to be organic, we want them to go out and race hard, so we didn’t see anything that crossed the line.”

This decision came at a crucial time for Buescher, who was fighting to secure a playoff spot. Following the Darlington race, he commented:

“Feel like we did what for the most part what we needed to do today.

“Got back in contention there at the end and had a decent finish out of it. Just uh, didn’t quite get it done again and now we are on the outside looking in.

“Unfortunately, it’s just the system we’re all playing in. We’ve had such a great year, everyone at RFK works so hard. We’ve been so fast, we’ve outrun so many of these cars that are going to get to run for a championship but that’s the system and we didn’t work it right.”

NASCAR Cup Series: Cook Out Southern 500 At Darlington Raceway Results

1. Chase Elliott – Running
2. Ryan Preece – Running
3. Austin Cindric – Running
4. Brad Keselowski – Running
5. Austin Dillon – Running
6. Bubba Wallace – Running
7. Todd Gilliland – Running
8. Daniel Suárez – Running
9. Alex Bowman – Running
10. Ty Gibbs – Running
11. Harrison Burton – Running
12. Ricky Stenhouse Jr – Running
13. Zane Smith – Running
14. Erik Jones – Running
15. John H. Nemechek – Running
16. Shane Van Gisbergen – Running
17. Justin Haley – Running
18. Michael McDowell – Running
19. Daniel Hemric – Running
20. William Byron – Accident
21. Josh Berry – Accident
22. Noah Gragson – Accident
23. Carson Hocevar – Accident
24. Kaz Grala – Running
25. Timmy Hill – Steering
26. Martin Truex Jr – Accident
27. Ryan Blaney – Accident