The Cody Ware wreck during the recently concluded Watkins Glen race gained huge traction, and with this came a series of backlash, which questioned how NASCAR sees safety in modern-day racing. The criticisms followed after the governing body did not throw a caution despite the #51 Rick Ware Racing car going out of the race unnaturally.

As questions were raised, NASCAR boss, Brad Moran, came clean on how the governing body wants to ramp up security measures following the incident. Speaking to the media after the race, Moran spoke about working on safety:

"We are working something. Our safety team with the new ECU, going in the car this weekend it for the first time. It has a lot of different options and we're basically looking at a solution where we can use our I-dash system, which is an incident recording device, which is in the cars, possibly signalling to the tower on this a variative of a hit and that would be very useful to us if we had that tool."

Nearing the final laps of the race, Cody Ware suffered a wreck, causing significant damage to the Armco barrier. The impact of the hit was massive, but NASCAR did not throw caution, allowing the race to end and Shane van Gisbergen to take the victory.

"The team's working on it and we hope again. It's the ECU is not even been in one of the race cars yet. In a real race. I mean, it was only tested at this point. So we have our safety team, who's the best in the business and they're they're working on a possible solution to get us even more information with some of the new technology," Moran further added.

As to why there was no caution, NASCAR vice president of racing communications Mike Forde clarified that on the Hauler Talk podcast.

“Tim Bermann (race director) clicks over to Turn 6, and as he flips over, he sees the 51 rolling off, and the turn spotter radios the track is clear, so there’s no debris,” Forde said.

However, Ware was unharmed and kept on moving his battered car to the garage. Although the track was clear while he was moving, if not otherwise, there could have been a serious impact, something former NASCAR driver Kurt Busch shed light on.

Kurt Busch calls out NASCAR over Watkins Glen decision

Kurt Busch shared his thoughts on the controversial Watkins Glen situation regarding Cody Ware. Speaking about it, the former 23XI Racing man showcased how the governing body acts differently on different incidents.

"I’ve seen where they dispatch ambulances at Talladega for someone just spinning out and not hitting anything. Then I’ve seen people clobber the wall and we stay green,” Busch explained as he compared the two incidents.

The fresh concerns coming from Kurt Busch make sense as he suffered a career-ending crash in July 2022 at the Pocono Raceway. It was the qualifying event of that race weekend, and Busch suffered a crash in Turn 3, which forced him to retire at the end of that season.

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Written by

Sabyasachi Biswas

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason