NASCAR pledges to keep throwing cautions on final lap

Yesterday at 05:40 PM

NASCAR followed through on its intention to throw a caution flag on the final lap of the Cup Series race to keep drivers from racing through a crash scene.

The issue arose after the Saturday night Xfinity Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway when NASCAR held the caution. As a crash occurred off Turn 2 in the middle of the pack, the leaders raced back to the finish. It was a decision that NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer labeled as "a little aggressive" and said that the caution should have been thrown.

On Sunday morning, it was addressed in the Cup Series driver's meeting. Sawyer reassured them the field would not be put in a position to race through a debris field and the caution would come out if a similar incident to what was seen in the Xfinity Series race occurred.

It did. A crash Sunday night started mid-pack on the backstretch and the caution flew. It froze the leaders as they were three-wide in Turns 3 and 4.

"If we don't throw the caution, you're incentivizing the competitors to drive through that," Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. "So, if you look back over the last week or so and nine superspeedway races that we've had if you count the duels and ARCA race … everybody is on top of each other, so the element of a last lap caution is there, as we've seen. It's on the sanctioning body to make sure that we do our absolute best to get to the start/finish line under green, but there is conditions and situations where we need to throw that. And we're going to err more on throwing it than not."

There has not been backlash from the garage over the decision. The reason it was brought up Sunday was that drivers wanted NASCAR to throw the caution flag, and felt they should have done so on Saturday night.

"Throwing the yellow flag to not make the back half of the field race for a position, that means so much on the white flag lap," Christopher Bell said. "I think it's the right call."

Kyle Larson, who finished third, didn't see an issue in the immediate aftermath of the race while still on pit road. The caution kept Larson from racing Bell and Hocevar to the finish line for the win.

"I think they probably made the right decision (Sunday night)," Larson said. "I think the last couple of weeks… it was a bit extreme. So, they probably made the right decision.

Denny Hamlin said NASCAR is now 1-0 in making the correct calls and wants to see them carry it forward. But he admitted while it was the right call, the fans, who want entertainment, probably didn't see it that way.

"I can assure you, there's not a driver in the field that would want that race to stay green given the scenarios that were going on," Hamlin said. "You keep these races green and somebody will end up getting hurt. There's just too much opportunity, and the drivers are way too vulnerable when they're sitting in the middle of the racetrack, and then cars have to go back full speed to gain spots. That's just not a good scenario for anyone.

"The race had to end under caution. Let's at least applaud them on making the right call for safety, because safety should always be No. 1 and entertainment should be No. 2. It sucks. It sucks it ends this way, but we're the ones that chose to wreck. I think it was the right call, and maybe this is a moment – let's give NASCAR the benefit of the doubt that they're going to change their ways. Let's start a new trend of consistency, starting now."