After his disappointment on Sunday, Kyle Larson said that he would be fully focused on winning his second Cup Series championship. Although there’s a chance that NASCAR might prevent him from doing that. The rules clearly state that a driver has to start every single race to be eligible for the playoffs. Meanwhile, NASCAR’s Senior Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer said that Hendrick Motorsports has not yet submitted an application for a waiver but they are expecting one pretty soon.
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“I haven’t seen a request come through, there’s really not a lot to report on that topic… We’ll let the process take its course. I’m sure at some point they will send in that request and when they do, we’ll go through our due diligence and meet with our people and again, this will be a decision that not just one person will make but group will sit, look at it, discuss it, and move forward,” he said on SiriusXM Radio.
🗣️ “This’ll be a decision that not just one person will make.”#NASCAR’s Elton Sawyer says @TeamHendrick hadn’t filed a waiver request for @KyleLarsonRacin as of Tuesday morning and outlined the process they’ll go through in this instance.
More → https://t.co/MKhd9eLXG8 pic.twitter.com/RjkSD32JR2
— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) May 28, 2024
Fans and insiders are divided on letting Yung Money compete for the championship in the playoffs. Some say that the situation just turned out to be unfortunate for the driver of the #5 car with the weather on Sunday. Others believe that Larson chose the Indy 500 over the Coke 600 after the former was delayed by four hours and that the rules should not be bent for that reason.
For NASCAR, this is unexplored territory. Sawyer mentioned that they haven’t faced a situation like this before but no decision has yet been taken about the #5 driver’s future.
NASCAR VP admits to being in ‘uncharted waters’ over Kyle Larson situation
No matter what the sanctioning body decides to do, there will be backlash. NASCAR has issued waivers before but it has been for medical purposes only, like Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman last year. For Kyle Larson, things are not that straightforward.
“He has missed a race so we start…it’s a little bit uncharted waters for us because in the past, the waivers have been mostly for a medical reason so this was a little bit different from that aspect. We’ve had some preliminary discussions but we haven’t landed,” Sawyer added.
It will be interesting to see what decision they take in this scenario as that will set a precedent for similar situations in the future for other drivers as well.
