Was NASCAR right to throw the caution?!?

NASCAR on FOX

    During yesterday’s Cup Series race at the Daytona Road Course, light rain developed on certain parts of the track, and after a lengthy wait, on lap 55, NASCAR decided to bring out the caution. 

At the moment this decision could be considered highly controversial, but I’d like to give you the facts on what happened, and explain why it probably was not NASCAR’s best decision. 

To start, if this race had taken place on an oval track, the decision to throw the caution might have made more sense, but since this race was on a road course, many have brought the decision into question. You see, in recent years NASCAR has allowed the use of rain tires and windshield wipers on road courses, which allows the race to continue during a rain storm (supposing there isn’t any lightning). Had teams felt that they needed rain tires, rather than slicks, all they had to do was pit and put the rain the tires on their cars.

None of the teams in yesterday’s race felt that the track conditions constituted switching to rain tires, and none of the teams pitted to do so. The sun was shining, a rainbow was seen over the track, and the track was only slightly damp in certain areas, which had yet to cause any issues whatsoever. That was of course until NASCAR decided to throw the caution. 

NASCAR claims their decision to display the yellow flag was made to allow teams to switch to rain tires... which obviously wasn’t necessary, otherwise we would had seen the teams decide to switch. For NASCAR, I feel this was really just a bad call. It even states in the NASCAR rule book that the caution would be called if “NASCAR determines conditions are too “wet” to continue under “dry” condition equipment”. Since there was really no trouble with the dry condition equipment, this really leads me to believe that NASCAR was not even paying attention to their own rules. 

Throughout this race the No. 9 of Chase Elliott, and the No. 20 of Christopher Bell were leading, although Chase Elliott was pretty far ahead of Christopher Bell and the rest of the pack in general. With the drivers spread out like this, there was very few incidents of cars wrecking. This race was left to display the true racing talent of the drivers, and was really not very dramatic whatsoever, NASCAR took notice. The first opportunity that they got, they threw the caution to cause a late race restart and revive that “excitement” they thought the race lacked. This led to drivers like Chase Elliott, Martin Truex Jr., Austin Dillon, and Kyle Larson, just to name a few, getting involved in incidents shortly after the restart, and losing the track position that they had so hard to keep, most of the day. This led to drivers like Joey Logano, Kurt Busch, and Brad Keselowski, who had run mid pack at best for most of the day, to get to the front of the pack, towards the end of the race. Joey Logano was leading until two laps to go when Christopher Bell passed Logano, and scored his first win in the NASCAR Cup Series. I believe, had NASCAR not thrown the caution, this race would had ended much differently. I’m not questioning Bell’s ability to win this race, he ran up front most of the day, and had a shot to win already, but what I am questioning is the other drivers’ inability to win the race.

I think it’s fair to ask ourselves, was NASCAR right to throw this caution for such light rain? This race was on a road course, and with lower speeds should have been completely manageable in the rain. Teams could had made the decision to switch to rain tires, but it was just not necessary. All that this decision did was wreck drivers who had fast cars all day, and left the race up to luck, rather than raw talent. It’s easy to see that to the NASCAR sanctioning body, entertainment holds precedence over real racing.