A prescription for NASCAR's yellow-flag fever

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Eagle1

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While I sure don't always agree with Larry, I think he got this one right.


A prescription for NASCAR's yellow-flag fever

Larry McReynolds / CREWCHIEFCLUB.COM

Every day, I try really hard to look at what we do in our sport and put a positive spin on everything. It's a great sport. We have a lot of people in our sport, and we have a great fan following.

But we do have an awful lot of issues right now. Like any other sport or business, we have to continue to make changes, grow and adapt, but we have so many things going on right now that it can be pretty confusing.
From commit lines on pit road to the free pass to freezing the field, I'm not sure NASCAR can keep up with everything. I'm not sure anybody can. When a caution comes out, we've got so many things going on at one time. At Dover, we ran 21 consecutive caution-flag laps. That's ridiculous. I know why they were run. NASCAR was trying to sort out a mess, but throw the red flag, stop the race and figure it out.

The mess, or the most confusing issue at Dover, happened toward the tail end of a rash of green-flag stops. Leader Ryan Newman spun, hit the commit-line cones -- which is a penalty -- hit the end of pit wall and brought out a caution. He sped down pit road and didn't stop. By the scoring monitor, he still had the lead of the race, but he was about to run out of gas. He finally ran out of gas, got a push back to the pits and ran the stop-and-go paddle. It was more than anybody could keep up with.


Ryan Newman gets a push from Ricky Rudd after he ran out of gas at Dover
Pat Crowe III/Associated Press
At the time of caution, was he on a lap by himself? If he was, should he have been back on the lead lap after all of the penalties or should he have been a lap down, which is where NASCAR placed him? NASCAR gave Newman a one-lap penalty for running the stop-and-go paddle, but I wish I could tell you exactly what happened on that whole deal. I know all of the elements; I'm just not 100 percent certain how NASCAR decided where he was supposed to be and what his penalty was supposed to be.

We've got a monster on our hands, and being honest, vocal and candid, it scares me a little bit because I'm not sure NASCAR actually realizes that we have some problems. I think they do, but I'm not 100 percent sure. If a person or an organization of any kind -- I don't care who it is or what it is -- has a weakness or a problem and they realize it, that's one thing. If they don't realize it, that's trouble.


Three ideas for 'fixing the mess'
There are probably two dozen remedies as we continue to try to make the sport better, but I would probably do three things:
Go back to the last completed lap to set the field.
Only give the free pass to a car in touch with the leader. In Monday's Busch race, a driver got two or three free passes when he was about to go down another lap. That's how bad he was running. I think "free" is a bad word to use because you still need to be able to earn it. When I say in touch with the leader, I mean between the first- and second-place cars. That's the only way you used to be able to get your lap back before the free pass.
When the white flag is displayed, you race back to the checkered flag.
Those are the three things that I would adjust today while also making every effort to work within the race procedures that NASCAR has in place now.

In NASCAR's mind, the race procedures may be working beautifully, but in the eyes of the competitors and fans, they are not. I realize NASCAR can't make knee-jerk reactions whenever someone is upset about how things are going, but sometimes you've got to say that something isn't working like we had hoped and adjust it.
 
Scoring Debacle Embarrassing
TONY FABRIZIO
Published: Jun 9, 2004







NASCAR has a bunch of smart people at its research and development complex near Charlotte, N.C., working on the ``car of the future.''
Maybe it's time to pull them off that job and put them on the timing-and-scoring problem of the present.

What happened Sunday at Dover was embarrassing for racing. And it has happened too often this year. It's time to simplify the scoring rules and let 21st-century technology help with keeping track of the cars.

The MNBA 400 took nearly five hours to complete, in part because of confusion that reigned after Ryan Newman spun out while entering the pits with 80 laps remaining.

NASCAR needed 24 laps of caution to figure out the running order - who was leading, who was on the lead lap, who should go to the tail end of the lead lap, etc. When the race was finally restarted, a Talladega-like ``big one'' followed, taking out 19 cars.

Maybe, as Michael Waltrip suggests, some drivers' tires picked up debris during the long caution, and that contributed to the wreck. Maybe it was frayed nerves or over-aggressive driving. In any case, the lengthy caution shouldn't have been necessary.

``These days, with computers and timing and scoring the way we've got them, I see there's just no reason to run 20 laps under caution to figure out scoring,'' Jeff Green said Tuesday.

NASCAR has run into scoring problems repeatedly since banning racing back to the caution late last season. Scoring is complicated by the proviso that the first driver one lap down be given a ``free pass'' back onto the lead lap whenever a caution flies.

Confusion often follows when a caution is thrown during green-flag pit stops. This first came up in 2004 at Rockingham in February. Kenseth took the checkered flag, but Chip Ganassi thought his driver, Jamie McMurray, should have been the winner because Kenseth and runner-up Kasey Kahne were caught in the pits when a caution came out.

``We just got robbed in front of 100,000 people,'' Ganassi said at the time.

In Sunday's race, Newman was on a lap of his own before his miscue because he was the last of the lead-lap drivers to pit. After his spin, he made his pit stop and then ran the stop sign at the end of pit road. NASCAR brought him back for a penalty, holding him one lap and scoring him a lap down.

But Newman's team asserted that holding Newman only put him on the same lap as everybody else - not a lap down. Sorting this out took NASCAR officials what seemed like half of the NHL playoff season.

NASCAR got ripped by several drivers after the race - in part because of the confusion over the scoring and in part because of the ongoing inconsistency of when caution flags are thrown.

Sunday's decisions were indeed odd. A caution was thrown for Newman's spin when the race probably could have stayed green, hence averting the confusion. But late in the race when Casey Mears' Dodge dropped oil on the track, no caution was thrown. Leader Kahne, Brian Vickers and Matt Kenseth spun in the oil and crashed. Mark Martin inherited the lead from Kahne and scored one of the strangest victories of his career.

Said Green on Tuesday, ``There wasn't anything on the racetrack [after Newman's spin], and to throw a caution in the middle of a green flag stop? Why not let things cycle through a couple more laps to get everybody on pit road and off? It put a lot of people a lap down, and the end result caused that wreck. To put people laps down - people lose their minds because of it.''

McMurray and Kenseth were pretty angry after the race. McMurray said it was the ``biggest joke of a race I've ever been involved in.''

These scoring issues are coming up too often. NASCAR needs to put the problem on the front burner.
 
So, part of the problem is the free pass rule...I say get ride of it and it will solve most of the confusion...the GPS sensors can clearly show what the positions are the everybody else, green flag in two laps!
 
I'm all in favor of doing away with the "Free Pass" rule.

I say if a car 1 lap down isn't between the 1st & 2nd place car he'd have no chace of getting his lap back from the old method anyway.
 
Yep i agree....get rid of the free pass, make the drivers earn it by actually passing the leader while racing under the green, pure and simple,so simple infact that it will never happen. Sometimes NASCAR just makes things more complicated than they really are!
 
I think once NASCAR gets all those timing transponders in place at all tracks, you will see an improvement. All it takes a money! :) At the moment there is only one transponder in place at all tracks.........at the start/finish line. My understanding is that NASCAR intends to place several around the tracks to assist in timing and scoring. I can see a need for maybe 6 on the short tracks, 8 to 10 on the 1 milers to 1 1/2 milers and a dozen or more on the big tracks. Don't know how many the road courses would need. That would better settle who was where when the caution flew........but I don't think it would do much for what happened with Ryan Newman last Sunday. It's pretty strange for someone to argue that they were still leading the race even though they caused the caution!

That argument about nothing on the track when Newman spun probably is correct...........I didn't see anything out there. But, when he hit the barrels at the end of pit road, he knocked a lot of water out on to the entrance to pit road! A caution was in order!! Plus, in order to be fair to everyone else, those cones had to be reset..........I can hear the argument now: "What commit line?"

I can do without the "lucky dog" pass...........at least as it stands now.
 
I totally agree with doing away with that dang "Lucky Arse Pup"
rule!!!! And I would love to see all cars NOT on the lead lap, go to the end of the longest line.
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