NASCAR: Is Richmond ambulance explanation reasonable?

3 of 4

RICHMOND, VA – SEPTEMBER 09: Matt Kenseth, driver of the #20 Hurricane Harvey Relief Toyota (Photo by Brian Lawdermilk/Getty Images) /

NASCAR’s explanation

Here is what NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Scott Miller had to say about the incident.

"“He didn’t stop when he was told to…We had a situation where a directive was given from the tower and it wasn’t followed. We’ll do our due diligence to figure out why the directive wasn’t followed and make sure we’re prepared never to make that mistake again.”"

By saying this, Miller is placing the blame on the ambulance driver for not following his orders. He is also saying that NASCAR will do whatever they can do to find out what caused this mistake, admitting that it was, indeed, a mistake.

"“We probably should (have closed pit road). Those calls are very dynamic in that they happen very, very quickly. It’s the race director in charge of pit road open and close and the track services and safety crew in charge of the other. We didn’t sync up tonight. We will make sure that we don’t let that happen again.”"

By saying this, Miller is brainstorming things that NASCAR could have done differently to prevent such a mistake, and he is essentially throwing things out there that NASCAR should do in the future if put in a similar situation.

"“It’s very tight at pit-in and as I said, we will analyze the situation and do a better job…We obviously have a lot of people in the tower watching a lot of different things. All of it is based on race directives from the tower, radio communications to the people that are out on the race track and when those directives aren’t followed, we end up in a situation like tonight. As I’ve said, dissect it and figure out how not to make the mistake again.”"

And finally, by saying this, Miller is pretty much clarifying what he said in the second paragraph, as he talks about what NASCAR could have done differently to prevent the incident and what they need to consider in the future to prevent something like that from happening again.

So was NASCAR’s explanation of why the incident happened the way it did reasonable?

Home/NASCAR