NASCAR's Elton Sawyer on Martinsville incident between Sam Mayer, Jeb Burton: 'Not something we're going to tolerate'

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, said Tuesday that the incident between Sam Mayer and Jeb Burton after the checkered flag in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Martinsville Speedway will be subject to further review. Any penalty could come as soon as Tuesday.

“Having those types of incidents after the checkered flag, it’s just not something we’re going to tolerate,” Sawyer said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “We’ll get with our team today, discuss it and see what the next steps are.”

Mayer and Burton had a back-and-forth battle throughout the night on the racetrack. It continued after the checkered flag, as Mayer wrecked Burton into the wall. After the race, Mayer was quick to call out Burton. He pointed to the week prior at Talladega Superspeedway as his original reason for disdain.

“The 27 [Burton] did us no favors last week,” Mayer said. “He caused a demolition derby and a parking lot on the front straightaway at the fastest racetrack we go to, and now he just decides to be an absolute dumbass this go around and race a guy with a purple spoiler just awful. It was awful to be around him all day. He’s just fast enough to be really, really annoying but not fast enough to do anything else worth a damn.”

.@sam_mayer_ was not happy with @JebBurtonRacing after the race. pic.twitter.com/PIrQHCTTY9

— The CW Sports (@TheCW_Sports) October 26, 2025

Jeb Burton ripped Sam Mayer after Martinsville

Burton ripped Mayer for his actions during and after the race. Burton felt that he wasn’t raced with respect that he tends to give Mayer. 

“I think Sam was mad that last week he got taken out in an accident at Talladega and he was acting like a child like Sam is,” Burton said, via Noah Lewis of TSJ Sports. “We’re on old tires at the end of Stage 1, I believe. And he shipped me out of the way, I think we all saw that, I was on the front row, for no reason. I’ve always raced Sam really clean, never had a problem with him.

“Then to, I moved him at the end for a spot because I was still pissed off at what he did, because when he moved me, I went back to 20th, and it really almost ruined our day because we got off strategy. So, that was frustrating. So, that’s why I moved him back. I didn’t wreck him, just moved him. At the end of the race after the checkered, he destroyed our car and wrecked us.

“So, hopefully, NASCAR does something because he literally right reared me into the outside wall. So, I don’t know. I hate for my guys to tear up a car, but you know, I race a lot of people out here with respect, and I just want it back. And he ran over me for no reason, so I gave it back to him, and he threw a temper tantrum. … I didn’t care if he needed the point or what. I could give two sh*ts about Sam Mayer. To be honest, the way he acts, he’s a punk, and I think everybody knows it.”

Sawyer said that Xfinity Series director Eric Peterson will lead NASCAR’s review of the incident. He again made it clear that “using vehicles to run into each other” is not the way to respond when things happen on the racetrack.

“I’ll let our series director Eric Peterson run point. He’ll talk to both drivers, in this case Jeb and Sam, get their side of the story. We’ll go back and look at all the replay,” Sawyer said. “We’ll look at the race as an entirety to see what unfolded early on and then we take all of that, we sit down and look at prior situations that are similar and we’ll make a decision on how we move forward. When things happen after the race and we start using vehicles to run into each other, that rises to a different level and we’ll respond accordingly.”