Motorsport photo Matt Weaver · Motorsport Tue, November 3, 2026 at 11:03 PM UTC · 4 min read About Our Ads Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement NASCAR Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer took to SiriusXM Radio on Tuesday to explain the rationale behind a pair of penalties to Carson Hocevar and Josh Berry for brake checking over the weekend at Martinsville Speedway.
First and foremost, the decision to issue the $100,000 fine to Hocevar and the $50,000 fine to Berry, plus 25 driver points each, came down to SMT data. NASCAR could see very decisively that both drivers retaliated on Sunday by slamming on their brakes and literally destroying the cars behind them.
In the case of Hocevar, the Spire No. 77 hard braked directly in front of Austin Cindric four times on the straightaways, even with spotter Tyler Green saying repeatedly 'Carson stop,' without a commensurate response.
Spire Motorsports took independent action from NASCAR earlier in the day by suspending Hocevar for the season finale this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Berry hard braked once on corner exit ahead of Ryan Blaney , which also forced the victim to go behind the wall, and Sawyer told Sirius Speedway host Dave Moody that this would not be tolerated.
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"I think the world that we live in today with the amount of data we can pull off the cars and go back and review that, we can make better decisions," Sawyer said. "The one thing that I would add and something that we're looking at is how we can do a better job, we as NASCAR, do a better job in officiating this within the race.
"We would love to not be talking about this today, would love to be talking about going to Homestead-Miami to crown three very deserving champions, whoever they may be, Friday night, Saturday or Sunday, but unfortunately, we're talking about this today. But what we really strive is to get it right. And sometimes you have to wait just a little bit to get all the data and get all the information to be able to do that."
With that said, Sawyer does aim for NASCAR to move towards being more capable of making just calls in real time.
Sawyer explained that NASCAR took this very seriously because it was the drivers that came to the Sanctioning Body and asked for softer bumpers in the first place. Some wanted softer bumpers to lessen the impact felt by drivers in the cars. Others wanted softer front bumpers to prevent drivers from divebombing each other in lieu of cleaner passes.
So that Hocevar and Berry weaponized that on Sunday required a response.
"We knew Martinsville would be the first test as far as being able to, how they could bump and run, and that's part of our DNA, that's part of Martinsville," Sawyer said. "But what rose to a level of real concern for us was that they had taken the structure of the front of the car and used that as an antic or a strategy to basically ruin other drivers' days and then we felt like we had to step in."
Hocevar was fined $100,000 compared to the $50,000 for Berry because Sawyer said NASCAR has had numerous 'behavioral meetings' with the young driver over the past several years.
"We just felt like after reviewing all the data and the audio, that this one rose to a level that it needed to be more than just the 50,000 that Josh got," Sawyer said.
Sawyer also said that Spire's decision to suspend Hocevar had no bearing on what NASCAR chose to do. That was an entirely independent choice.
The obvious question after all of this is if NASCAR went too far in softening the front bumpers and if the league needs to reverse course. Sawyer said no, but hedged the answer with a maybe at the same time.
"We know a lot more today than we knew yesterday, and we'll know a lot more tomorrow about this situation as far as the car and how we want to react going forward with it," Sawyer said. "But we're always learning, as we've said many, many times. And this is a safety initiative that our sport has had for decades and it's not a destination, it's a journey.
"We'll continue to look at the cars and what we can do to make them as safe as possible. We know that motorsports in general is inherently a dangerous sport and we want to do everything we can to make our competitors and our fans as safe as possible.
"So to get to the actual point there, we will go back and look at this and see what adjustments we can make to the car that will also give us some of the best racing, short track racing that our fans deserve and that is a little bumping and moving cars and the tire marks – things we have accustomed to loving about our short tracks. So yes, we will address that as well."
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Source: Sports
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