{"id":64307,"date":"2025-08-12T15:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T15:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/64307\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T15:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T15:47:09","slug":"elton-sawyer-fires-back-at-nascar-critics-after-shane-van-gisbergen-dominates-another-road-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/64307\/","title":{"rendered":"Elton Sawyer fires back at NASCAR critics after Shane van Gisbergen dominates another road course"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR<\/a>\u2018s senior vice president of competition, pushed back on criticism of the current Cup Series product on road courses. During a Tuesday appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio<\/a>, Sawyer called the product \u201cgood,\u201d adding that Shane van Gisbergen\u2018s dominance on road courses should be celebrated by fans. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve got a product that\u2019s good but as we said last week, we\u2019re always looking to make our product better. I think our fans \u2014 if I would throw any nugget out there to them \u2014 let\u2019s celebrate and get behind what SVG is doing because on these road courses, this isn\u2019t easy. These are some of the best road course racers in the world that\u2019s in the Cup Series,\u201d Sawyer said. \u201c\u2026 Back in the day when it was Rusty Wallace and Ricky Rudd, Tim Richmond \u2014 these guys were really good on road courses. Then you go through the Jeff Gordon era where I believe he had six in a row on road courses. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Shane is doing right now at this level of competition \u2014 and the competition he\u2019s racing against is phenomenal \u2014 so I think we should embrace that, celebrate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASCAR field well off the pace of Shane van Gisbergen at road courses<\/p>\n

Van Gisbergen is unmatched at tracks where you turn left and right. More often than not, he wins and wins by a lot. Sunday at Watkins Glen International, he beat Christopher Bell to the start-finish line by 11.1 seconds, becoming the\u00a0first driver in the Era of Electronic Timing and Scoring to have multiple wins in a season with a margin of victory of 10 plus seconds. Van Gisbergen has now won four of the five road course races this season. <\/p>\n

His dominance aside, Watkins Glen didn\u2019t provide many fireworks. The much panned Next Gen car hasn\u2019t provided the most excitement on short tracks and road courses, though it has generally been a winner at intermediate tracks. <\/p>\n

Yes, Sawyer likes the current road course product. At the same time, he said NASCAR is always working to \u201cmake the product better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we look at our product on the racetrack, we want to continue to look at that and what we can do whether it\u2019s the car, the engine, the tires, whatever it may be, to continue week in and week out to bring the best racing possible to our race fans. \u2026 Our goal is always to continue to make the product better,\u201d Sawyer said. \u201cI can\u2019t emphasize that enough. We\u2019re not just sitting still on what we have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elton Sawyer, NASCAR\u2018s senior vice president of competition, pushed back on criticism of the current Cup Series product…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-64307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}