NASCAR Race Director Admits Mistake in Daytona Duel Finish
On the latest episode of Hauler Talk, an official podcast from NASCAR that serves as the vessel for NASCAR officials to explain controversial calls from race control during race weekends, NASCAR Cup Series race director Jusan Hamilton addressed the questionable finish to the second Duel Qualifier race at Daytona International Speedway.
In that event, Erik Jones defeated Austin Cindric at the finish line in a photo finish. However, NASCAR called a caution flag due to a crash coming to the finish line on the final lap, and as a result, the running order was frozen just hundreds of feet before the cars collected the checkered flag. After several minutes of uncertainty, Cindric, not Jones, was declared the winner of the Duel.
RELATED: Awkward! Erik Jones Celebrates Victory Before NASCAR Names Different Winner
The call to throw the caution that close to the finish line sparked much debate on social media in the aftermath of Thursday's Duels. The debate only intensified when the leaders were allowed to race back to the finish line in Sunday's Daytona 500 despite a last-lap massive crash on the backstretch involving race leader Denny Hamlin.
Hamilton admits he would like to have the call from Thursday's Duel back, but that it's tough to get every call correct in the heat of the moment as a race is unfolding.
“So hindsight is always 20/20, and that’s one when you look back, I would say we could do it differently. I would say that we could let them get to the start/finish line, but that’s looking back now on a Tuesday, going through all of our reviews and having the luxury of time to review the full situation,” Hamilton said.
While many questioned why there was a caution called at the end of Duel 2, many also wondered why there wasn't a caution called on the final lap of the Daytona 500, as Hamlin and others had impacts into the wall and were stuck on the backstretch in that melee.
According to Hamilton, the location of cutouts in the track, which allow ambulances and safety vehicles to arrive at the scene of an accident, allowed race control to keep the caution flag sheathed on the last lap of The Great American Race.
“As soon as the wreck happens, because all vehicles have passed by that Turn 2 cutout, we’re able to respond, sending the fire trucks, the ambulances, the AMR chase vehicles to respond to that incident before the leaders even made it to the checkered, even though there’s no caution,” Hamilton explained.
The race director admits that the goal going forward for the sanctioning body is to have green-flag finishes.
“Moving forward and always, our goal is to get to a green-flag finish," Hamilton said. "We do not want to be the ones determining the race by how fast we push the caution button or the decisions that we make in race control in general. We want that to be decided by the competitors on the ground. So any opportunity that we have to do that, we’re going to take advantage."
As long as calls in sports are made by humans, there will always be mistakes. Perfect is something that all humans are incapable of being. But Hamilton ensures that the gravity of the situation in the tower is understood and that Race Control will try to minimize mistakes.
“The weight of getting these calls correct is definitely not lost on us, and our goal is to obviously do better as we move forward,” Hamilton said.
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Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.