A red flag would have helped alleviate the lengthy caution that sent the NASCAR Cup Series race at Daytona International Speedway into overtime last Saturday.
The yellow flag for the Turn 4 crash involving Carson Hocevar and Erik Jones lasted nine laps. That went four laps past the scheduled distance and left many teams concerned about having enough fuel to reach the finish after circling for so long under the yellow flag.
RELATED: How 2026 Chase works | Notable drivers who missed Chase“Hindsight being 2020, we wish we had red-flagged it,” NASCAR vice president of racing communications Mike Forde said on the latest episode of the “Hauler Talk” podcast. “Our goal is always to get back to green as soon as possible. I think we felt that we would be able to clean it up faster than we did, and it really was the worst-case scenario.”
Forde said the wreck left oil against the outside wall on Daytona’s 31-degree banking, which made it unreachable with the vacuum truck that NASCAR normally uses for a cleanup. The process took longer with jet driers blowing off the Speedy Dry compound for absorbing fluids from the surface.
“Another problem we ran into is when you don't red-flag it, the cars are still going by at speed,” Forde said. “So when you blow it down, the cars come back under caution, and they're kind of kicking it back up and almost undoing the work that was already done. So that added some time as well.
“We had to lay down two layers of the Speedy Dry. The first one is just so that the blowers can get the traction to get up in that area, and then (a second layer) to actually clean up that area. So a lot of learnings for sure. It definitely took longer than we would have liked.”
Forde said a better solution would have been to apply the Speedy Dry by hand while the race was stopped.
“That was a lengthy topic of conversation in the debrief meetings because we want to be better, and that was one where we wish we could have that back,” Forde said. “We would have red-flagged it and done it better.”
Other topics covered by Forde and senior director of racing communications Amanda Ellis during the 68th episode of “Hauler Talk,” which explores competition issues in NASCAR:
-- An evaluation of the new superspeedway rules package at Daytona and what’s ahead for its use at Talladega Superspeedway.
-- What NASCAR safety officials learned in the aftermath of a heavy collision between the cars of Daniel Dye and Kyle Larson.
-- The backstory of the “Does Everybody Hate Carson Hocevar?” release from NASCAR Communications.
Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is a contributor to the “Hauler Talk” show on the NASCAR Podcast Network. He has also covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.