War Of Words On Kyle Larson’s NASCAR Waiver.
After a somewhat controversial delay NASCAR granted Kyle Larson a waiver that makes him eligible for this year’s Playoffs Tuesday.
Larson was trying to become one of five NASCAR drivers to complete the Indianapolis 500-Coca-Cola 600 double and missed the 600 on May 26 due to weather delays at Indy.
When he finally did arrive at Charlotte that race was also under a weather delay and eventually was called due to weather before he even turned a lap.
According to NASCAR’s rules, for a driver to be eligible for the driver’s championship they must at least start every NASCAR race in a season. In the past NASCAR has granted waivers, but normally for drivers who miss a race due to injury.
Kyle Busch was granted one in 2015 after he sustained two broken legs in a crash at the end of the Xfinity race at Daytona missing the first 11 races, and last season Chase Elliott after he broke his leg while snowboarding and missed races.
The same year his younger brother suffered his injuries, older brother Kurt Busch was also granted a waiver after NASCAR had suspended him following domestic abuse charges. Once those charges were dropped, Kurt Busch was reinstated, and the waiver was granted.
Shortly after the announcement that the waiver was granted NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer met with the media and said that they didn’t take the decision lightly, and there was a lot of discussions internally.
I’m proud of our team and how we took the due diligence to work through this process,” Sawyer said. “But ultimately landed at giving Kyle a waiver so he’ll be eligible for the playoffs going forward.”
During the delay while waiting on the decision, many speculated that since Larson never got a chance to race the car in Charlotte it was affecting whether NASCAR would grant him a waiver.
Sawyer said the team did take that into consideration, but in the end felt Larson had done everything he could to get to the track to race.
He was standing in the pit box when his helmet went on ready to go,” he said. “Unfortunately, we had weather in Charlotte as well, and we weren’t fortunate enough to get the race, going again.
That’s how we landed at our decision.”
Sawyer acknowledged that waivers in the past seemed to be granted relatively quickly, however, Larson’s call was different.
“This was without a doubt, uncharted waters,” Sawyer said. “In the past those waivers have been given mostly for medical reasons or situations where drivers were suspended from our event. And those waivers were granted fairly quickly.
“This one, again, was unprecedented in the fact that we had a driver miss one of our races, one of our Cup races, a championship event to be at another event. That’s why it took as long as it did.
“I’m proud of our process. I’m proud of the team here at NASCAR and the way we worked through that. And we felt like the time that it took roughly a week, was exactly what we needed to get to the right decision.
As for the consideration of any sort of penalties for missing a Cup race to race somewhere else, Sawyer pointed out that Larson lost out on 23 potential championship points which negates any sort of points penalty that would have come from NASCAR.
As for changing the rules about waivers, Sawyer said there is nothing concerning that, at least for this season.
We’re going to look at it, take a deeper dive,” Sawyer said. “But as we sit here today, we feel like we have language in the rule book that would support, obviously given the waiver and, and be not given the waiver. So it’s in the rule book.”
If there’s something we feel like and what we’ve learned from this process that we need to…add some language or delete some language, you know, we’ll do that.
“But as we sit here today … we don’t feel like we need to do anything at the moment. But… there’s a long list of rules that as you go through the season we talk about, we put them on the kind of the agenda for the off season, and we’ll do that with this one as well.”