"We're human beings" - NASCAR's Elton Sawyer makes honest admission to Dale Earnhardt Jr. regarding tricky officiating calls

Dale Earnhardt Jr. recently questioned NASCAR Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer, about the tough decisions the governing body sometimes has to make. One instance of this came in the last Cup race at Kansas as Chris Buescher and Kyle Larson crossed the line incredibly close to each other.

Buescher was initially deemed the winner, but minutes later, it was found that instead of the Ford, it was Larson that had crossed the line first by a margin of 0.001 seconds. The decision was made, and the win was taken away from the RFK driver and handed to the Hendrick driver.

In this manner, NASCAR has had to make a few high-stakes decisions, which may or may not turn out to be popular. It was around these lines that Dale Earnhardt Jr. asked Elton Sawyer a question on the Dale Jr. Download podcast.

"When you know you've gotta make a decision that's not going to be very popular, what is that experience been like for you? I think that would probably be one of the things that I least enjoyed about the job is being put in that situation and have to make a choice that you didn't want to make that day," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said.

Sawyer replied that while they have a rule book, they're also aware that sometimes there are incidents that surpass what's written in the book. To him, that is "a penalty" and a situation that leads to asking a question about the right thing to do.

He then made an honest admission as he mentioned where their emphasis is on with their decisions and how far they're willing to go to do the right thing.

"We're human beings. We're going to make mistakes. I tell our teams all the time. We're going to do our best to do the right thing. If we need to go back and we need to change some language in the rulebook, we'll do that," Sawyer said.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. unhappy with the state of start/finish line at Kansas

There were many complaints that were made after the Cup race at Kansas, with fingers pointed to aspects of the racetrack and decision making. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was also among those with a complaint to NASCAR about the inability to reach a swift decision.

Earnhardt criticized the state of the start/finish line and said on his podcast:

“It was almost like someone painted that line and then somebody came by and painted a little extra to the start/finish line. That was like a addition. Y’all ever see a nice house and then it has a shitty addition on the side of it?”

Considering the specific outrage and complaints from Kansas, going forward it'll be interesting to see what and how NASCAR decides to deal with such situations better. Denny Hamlin notably suggested adding better cameras to the start/finish line.