{"id":66020,"date":"2025-08-13T07:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T07:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/66020\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T07:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T07:46:09","slug":"nascars-elton-sawyer-reveals-likelihood-of-austin-hill-penalty-after-incident-with-michael-mcdowell-at-watkins-glen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/66020\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR’s Elton Sawyer reveals likelihood of Austin Hill penalty after incident with Michael McDowell at Watkins Glen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR<\/a>\u2018s senior vice president of competition, said Tuesday they \u201cdon\u2019t see anything at this time\u201d to suggest that Austin Hill will be penalized for wrecking Michael McDowell in this past Saturday\u2019s Xfinity Series race at Watkins Glen International. Sawyer viewed it as a racing incident, though he acknowledged that some drivers made \u201csome bad decisions\u201d over the weekend. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t see anything at this time,\u201d Sawyer said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio<\/a>. \u201cI think all of those incidents this past weekend \u2014 we look at them, we start on Monday looking at all the data and even situations that have not been viewed by our audience and even teams. We take a much deeper dive into that and what I would say to this past weekend, there was some decisions made that I\u2019m sure today and yesterday that drivers would look back on \u2014 hard racing, but probably some decisions that they look back on as not any intentional or malicious intent, but I do believe there was some bad decisions that were made. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut that happens in racing from time to time. We\u2019ve all been there and seen it. We\u2019ll review all of that again, but I don\u2019t see anything at this time that would rise to the level of any kind of points or suspension or money or anything. Maybe some conversations, but I don\u2019t see anything deeper than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Austin Hill reacts to 16-car wreck at Watkins Glen<\/p>\n

Making his return from a one-race suspension, Hill was involved in another controversy. Racing against McDowell for P2 in Stage 3, Hill got to the inside of his left quarter panel. The two cars made contact, and McDowell slammed into the wall. Soon after, dirt was in the air and multiple cars came piling into the area.<\/p>\n

In total, 16 cars were involved in the wreck, which brought out the red flag. Hill was adamant after the race that he didn\u2019t wreck McDowell on purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust two guys going for it. Nothing malicious, as much as everybody wants to sit there and try to make it more than it is. It was just two guys racing it out,\u201d Hill said. \u201cI was trying to get by the 88 [Connor Zilisch] as quick as I could because the 88 was driving away from us and thought that we could maybe have a shot at racing with him and racing for the win there. Had a massive run off the Carousel. I kind of thought I was trying to catch [McDowell] off guard and get to his left side.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe grass was coming up in front of us. I had to get to the right. I was kind of hoping he was going to move to the right and kind of give me some room, and it just didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill finished fourth at Watkins Glen. McDowell, making his first Xfinity start since 2016, finished 25th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elton Sawyer, NASCAR\u2018s senior vice president of competition, said Tuesday they \u201cdon\u2019t see anything at this time\u201d to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-66020","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\/66020","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=66020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}