NASCAR officials admitted on Tuesday that they made a mistake in how they placed the cars of Parker Kligerman, Josh Berry, and Sammy Smith during the overtime restart in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Watkins Glen International.
The move could have a sizable impact on the playoff race down the stretch.
“Why we restarted ninth I have no idea,” Kligerman said after finishing third in Saturday’s race. “We’ve got to talk to NASCAR and somebody has got to explain this to me because I’m pretty sure the car that hit me in the wreck was (Berry), who then starts fifth. I get sent to ninth. If we start fifth, we win this race. That’s really disappointing.”
Kligerman is currently the first driver outside of the playoffs with three races left to qualify. He sits three points back of Riley Herbst and 22 points behind Sheldon Creed.
“Our goal is to get back to green as soon as possible,” NASCAR told NBC Sports on Tuesday. “There are no timeouts in NASCAR, so we need to move quickly to give fans as many green flag laps as possible. In this instance, we should have taken the extra step and, potentially, the extra lap to ensure the correct lineup.”
The problem arose as officials tried to make sense of an accident that occurred late in the race, sending various drivers’ cars into disarray, making it hard to figure out who should be where on the restart.
“At the time of caution, (Berry’s) transponder did not hit the loop (he was part in the grass, part on the rumble strip), so it did not register a freeze position,” NASCAR told NBC Sports. “The lineup reverts to the previous loop at the time of caution. Where we erred was positioning (Berry’s car) in its position at the time of caution versus its position at the previous loop. That affected (Kligerman’s) and (Smith’s) position.”
When the final order was decided for the overtime restart, Berry was fifth, Smith was eighth, and Kligerman was ninth.
Berry ended up finishing 20th, Smith finished 18th, and Kligerman finished third while Sam Mayer won the race.
Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, said on Tuesday that NASCAR made “some corrections” after the race to address the situation.
