A competition caution to correct an official's mistake 45 laps from the end of Friday's Nationwide race (won by Brad Keselowski) changed the complexion of the race.
Kevin Harvick, who did not need to pit the rest of the way, was trying to play a fuel-mileage scenario to earn the win. When NASCAR called the caution, it ruined his chances and he let loose on his team's radio about how upset he was.
What happened was that NASCAR penalized Brian Scott for lug nut(s) not installed. Yet, when he came down pit road, it turned out he had all five lug nuts on and that the NASCAR official had made a mistake, costing Scott a lap.
So, the question became what would NASCAR do?
"We talked about it (in the control tower) and it took a couple of laps but really we've tried to correct those calls in the past,'' said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR senior VP of competition. "It's not the first time we've fixed a call like that even though I hope it's the last time, but it probably won't be. It's human error.''
NASCAR's actions didn't please Harvick. After the caution, Harvick was upset and his feelings were summed up when he told his team on the radio: "I can't even tell you how .... (upset) I am about this caution.''
Harvick's anger had not subsided after the race.
"I've never seen such a thing in my whole life,'' he said. "That's like stopping the game in the middle of a play and saying, "Oh, we're going to start over.' It's hard to play strategy any more. Another ghost caution. Two years ago, they missed us on the scoring loop and after the race they patted us on the shoulder and said, "Man, gee, we're sorry guys, I appreciate it, thanks for playing.'
Asked if there was anything to talk to NASCAR about on this issue, Harvick said: "That's like talking to the wall. All they'll say is "Gee, sorry, thanks, appreciate it, glad you came and raced today.''
Asked how he'll get over something like this, Harvick said: "You want to play in their sandbox, I guess you've got to play by their stupid rules.''
Team officials for Kevin Harvick Inc. met with NASCAR officials after the race. The meeting lasted about 10 minutes but nothing changed.
Aftereward, Pemberton explained what happened:
"At that time of the race we felt we needed to fix (the mistake on the call) sooner rather than later,'' Pemberton said. "It was in a fuel window for the end of the race and we deserved to correct the call that was made on pit road for that team.''
Asked what he meant by sooner rather than later ... Pemberton said: "We were through a pit cycle, so the fuel thing wasn't a deal and the way the race was going on, we felt we needed to just fix it as quickly as we could.''
Asked about the balance of correcting a call with changing the complexion of the race ... Pemberton said: "There was as much racing as there was left (about 40 laps after the caution ended). It's a tough thing to balance out and it's not something that makes everyone happy. For sure there was a mistake made. The way to correct that mistake was to throw the caution and give that team the opportunity to get the lap back that we took from them for a bad call.''
Asked if they thought there was time in the race for another caution if they would have thrown it ... Pemberton said: "We may have looked at it in a different way, but we felt that we needed to make that judgment call as quickly as possible.''
Asked if that's a dangerous asumption to think a caution might not come out so go ahead and throw one immeidately ... Pemberton said: "Not every situation is the same, right? Not all race tracks are the same. The races don't work out the same. It's important to leave as much racing left in that situation. We knew we made a mistake, and we knew we needed to correct it if we could and we did that.''
