NASCAR CUP SERIES: AUTOTRADER ECHOPARK AUTOMOTIVE 500

September 25, 2022

Scott Miller

Press Conference

An Interview with:

Q. Talk about what you saw today. A lot of questions about what happened with the tires.

SCOTT MILLER: Well, I mean, obviously we saw a lot of tire problems, and we saw a lot of teams that didn't have tire problems.

We're working through that. Goodyear is working through that with the teams, working through what the setups were, what the air pressures were, to try to get to the bottom of it.

There was a lot of teams that reported no problems to us post-race, and they did admit to being a little bit on the conservative side air pressure and being closer to the suggested minimums that Goodyear recommended.

Q. Scott, did you guys consider penalizing William Byron for tapping Denny Hamlin there under caution? If so, what were the discussions and why the ultimate decision not to penalize him?

SCOTT MILLER: I have to be honest with you. When we were in the tower, we were paying more attention to the actual cause of the caution up there and dispatching our equipment.

The William Byron-Denny Hamlin thing we had no eyes on. We saw Denny go through the grass. By the time we got to a replay that showed the incident well enough to do anything to it, we had gone back to green.

I'm not sure that issue is completely resolved as of yet. We'll be looking at that when we get back to work.

Q. Potential penalty for that?

SCOTT MILLER: We're going to work through those things.

Q. On the tires, this is the same tire we're going to use at Las Vegas. Are you going to talk to the teams, Goodyear, to figure out if there's issues there, try to avoid that?

SCOTT MILLER: Yeah, that's what I said. Goodyear is working with the teams on their setups and everything else to try to mitigate the problems that we're certainly seeing.

We're all learning about the setups, the tires. Goodyear is learning about the construction, the new wheel. It's part of a learning -- it's an unfortunate part of a learning process.

As I said earlier, the ones that didn't have any problems admitted to being on the conservative side with all the things that are difficult on tires.

They make speed, but they're difficult on tires.

Q. Some of the teams said, the conservative teams, there's still an amount of laps that a tire should last. How long should the tires last? They didn't have enough tire today.

SCOTT MILLER: I don't really know how to comment on how long a tire should last.

The top four at least ran 64 laps home. If they can go 64 laps, they have plenty of tires to get the job done.

Q. In reference to the Hamlin-Byron incident, could you have put Hamlin back in his position had you seen it soon enough?

SCOTT MILLER: So if we had seen that good enough to react to it real-time, which we should have, like no excuse there, there would probably have been two courses of action: one would have been to put Hamlin back where he was, and the other would be to have made William start in the back.

Q. So moving forward, because this is a situation that impacts a couple Playoff drivers, could impact their Playoffs, you have talked about in the tower of making some things when there are issues, having the committee with cautions after the All-Star Race, what more can you do to try to be better or try to avoid a situation like this?

SCOTT MILLER: Well, so we don't have the cameras and -- the cameras and the monitors that we've got, we dedicate them mostly to officiating, seeing our safety vehicles, how to dispatch them, all that. By the time we put all those cameras up, we don't have room for all of the in-car cameras to be monitored.

If we would have had immediate access to the 24 in-car camera, that would have helped us a lot with being able to find that quickly. That's definitely one of the things that we're looking at.

Q. A lot of cautions. What about the track itself, the things that have been talked about, reconfiguration?

SCOTT MILLER: Well, I think the general consensus, this is just is my opinion, this has been a difficult track to race on for a while now.

What the plans are for it, anything like that, I don't have any details on any of that. But if you ask the drivers, if you ask the crew chiefs, it's been a difficult place over the years, for sure.

Q. Will you debrief with the teams? How do you reach out to the teams? What will the process be?

SCOTT MILLER: Well, I mean, we have a pretty open dialogue with the teams and the engineers. We have a meeting with Goodyear. Goodyear has open dialogues with the team.

It's not like anybody doesn't want to participate in that. We all as an industry want to figure out how we can be better.