Elton Sawyer: No Penalty for Chris Buescher After Lap 323 Run-in With Todd Gilliland

NASCAR's Elton Sawyer says Buescher won't be penalized following a Lap 323 run-in with Todd Gilliland in Sunday's Southern 500 at Darlington.

Chris Buescher will not receive any kind of reprimand from NASCAR following a Lap 323 incident with Todd Gilliland in Sunday's Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington. / Photo Credit: Tyson Gifford, Racing America

Chris Buescher will not receive any reprimands for an incident involving the RFK Racing driver and Todd Gilliland on the 323rd lap of Sunday's Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington.

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition, spoke to SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday about this past weekend's events at Darlington Raceway, where he confirmed NASCAR will take no further action on Buescher.

"Not anything," Sawyer said about possible penalties for the incident. "You look at Darlington, it's tight. It's hard racing, we've said that for years."

"I don't want our fans to get in a position thinking that we're going to be over-officiating our races, as far as contact," Sawyer added. "We're a contact sport, it's in our DNA. What happened at Richmond, happened at Richmond, and we responded to that. We want our racing to be organic, we want them to go out and race hard, so we didn't see anything that crossed the line."

The incident in question happened while Buescher and Gilliland were fighting side-by-side for a position inside the top-15. At the exit of Turn 2, contact from the side of the No. 38 (Gilliland) pushed the No. 17 (Buescher) into the outside wall.

In the aftermath of the contact, the Prosper, Texas-native then appeared to move quickly away from the outside wall, gravitating down the racetrack and contacting the right-rear corner of Gilliland's Ford Mustang spinning the Front Row Motorsports driver across the track, in front of traffic, and into the outside wall.

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While the damage to Gilliland's Long John Silver's-sponsored machine looked substantial initially, the No. 38 crew, led by crew chief Ryan Bergenty, was able to get the car patched up so that the third-year driver could return to the racetrack, where he salvaged a 17th-place result.

Buescher continued on without any damage to his No. 17 Ford Mustang Dark Horse, bringing home a sixth-place finish. However, with Chase Briscoe scoring the victory at Darlington, the RFK Racing driver failed to make the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.