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NASCAR official addresses incident involving sweeper truck at Iowa

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Dillon Bassett wrecks out after he crashes into the back of the sweeper truck as he attempts to make a late pit stop.

A NASCAR senior executive suggested Monday that series officials could have delayed opening pit road by a lap in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Iowa Speedway to avoid the incident Dillon Bassett had with a sweeper.

Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s chief racing development officer, made the comments Monday on “The Morning Drive” on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

Bassett’s race ended when he ran into the back of a sweeper truck while trying to enter pit road with 28 laps left in the race. Bassett’s vision was obscured by the cloud kicked up by the sweeper. Bassett finished 26th.

There were two trucks in the apron near the entrance to pit road as the field passed. Some cars cut down to enter pit road under caution.

Tyler Reddick, Justin Allgaier, Riley Herbst, Justin Haley and Zane Smith passed the sweeper truck, which appeared to stop as the cars came by. Bassett was a little further back and hit the back of the truck. Gray Gaulding, who was behind Bassett, had to dart to the right to avoid hitting Bassett’s car after it slammed into the back of the sweeper truck.

O’Donnell was asked on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio about what happened and what could be done to avoid that situation from repeating in future races.

“You look at the circumstance on our end of what happened,” O’Donnell said. “You saw a number of cars able to pass the sweeper. We had a conversation with the driver (Bassett). There was some lack of communication, I would say, with the spotter on the team side. We’ll correct that. The team will correct that.

“But then on our end, you look at the circumstances there. It’s one thing to be parked, which we’ve had many times and it’s worked successfully. It’s another when you look at kind of the smoke or fog, I guess, that was created.

“I think in that instance, you learn from it, you maybe keep pit road closed one more lap and don’t try to get back to green as fast. Always a challenge for us because we want to make the fans happy and get back racing as quickly as possible but in that case you could probably wait one more lap. We’ll go back and continue to look at the film and make adjustments.”