“There has to be multiple people looking for dramatic events that could be a hazard,” Denny Hamlin did not hold back while criticizing NASCAR for allegedly ignoring Cody Ware’s crash at Watkins Glen. Now, with massive backlash surrounding the incident, the sport seems to be making some changes in the car, while also defending against Hamlin’s comments.

“The track has all their local corner-workers that are on a different radio with the racetrack, who is in race control as well,” claimed Brad Moran, the Cup Series’ Managing Director. This was rather interesting, however, since Hamlin had earlier claimed that NASCAR had been cutting down on the track workers, mentioning it could have been one of the reasons why the authorities did not act up.

There has been a large debate about the inconsistency of the caution flags in recent races. While even spins sometimes trigger caution, Ware’s massive crash at the Glen went unnoticed by the authorities (and by TV viewers, thanks to FOX’s coverage).

But as Moran claimed, the track workers did observe the crash, and it was a conscious decision not to put out the caution.

“The #51 made significant contact and then stopped up by the restart zone in the tire pack. He did drive away within seconds. So once he drove away, a caution did not come out. We were not going to throw it at that point unless, you know, we had debris or something come off,” he explained.

However, the entire timing of the caution was questionable. This incident happened in the final few laps, when Ware was battling Josh Berry for position before spinning out on the corner and going into the wall. The massive impact jumped his #51 around before it settled back and continued moving.

There was, seemingly, enough time to wave caution within this period, considering the authorities were quick enough to do the same on the final lap at Kansas earlier. Ware had spun around at the time as well and was able to continue without any damage, yet a full-course caution was blown, modifying the race result.

However, in response to the criticism, NASCAR now seems to be working toward a final solution as well.

“We are working on something, our safety team, […] we’re basically looking at a solution where we can use our IDAS system, which is an incident recording device which is in the cars, possibly signaling to the tower the severity of a hit and that would be very useful to us if we had that tool,” Moran added.

This tool could add another layer of safety to the Next Gen car, which has been dubbed the safest car in NASCAR history multiple times. However, the cars have already been equipped with similar devices, which don’t exactly seem to be very consistent with the triggers. A former driver also explained this recently.

Former NASCAR driver reveals inconsistency in Next Gen’s safety features

One of the most prominent features of the Next Gen car is the presence of a ‘black box,’ which is triggered when the car has a 15G+ impact during the race. This should send an alert to the authorities, and then they can decide on putting out a caution. Kurt Busch claimed that the system still remains inconsistent, referring to Ware’s crash at Watkins Glen.

“These cars have black boxes in them, and they need to trigger a yellow when a car has a 15G impact or 20—we all need to come up with that number,” he said. “I’ve seen where they dispatch ambulances at Talladega for someone just spinning out and not hitting anything. Then I’ve seen people clobber the wall, and we stay green. It’s still so inconsistent.”

The most ironic part of the entire crash was that it was a front-hitting impact, and John Patalak from NASCAR’s safety board had earlier claimed: “In frontal impacts, the Next Gen [data] shows to perform a little better.” Yet, there was no caution when Cody Ware crashed. Was it a case of the authorities simply failing to see the incident? Even Hamlin had claimed that NASCAR is cutting down on its on-track staff.

But as the authorities continue to defend their tactics, the case keeps becoming more interesting. As of now, no significant changes seem to have been announced following the incident, but it is possible that the stewards decide to throw in more cautions in the upcoming races, which might still end up getting the fans upset.