NASCAR: Five Lessons Learned From Martinsville

NASCAR Screwed Up At Martinsville

With everything going on in the Chase and how important each one of the Chase races is, a lot of the time the focus will be on drivers instead of NASCAR.

At Martinsville though, NASCAR fumbled how they handled a caution and the spotlight quickly shifted.

It all started around Lap 356 when Carl Edwards blew a tire. While this was going on drivers where coming in for green flag pit stops.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue for NASCAR, but for some reason at Martinsville NASCAR just couldn’t get a handle on the running order. It took them about 30 laps to finally figure out where drivers belonged.

While they were trying to get the order straightened out NASCAR was calling for drivers to stop moving out of their lines or trying to improve their positions while under caution.

NASCAR was confused and instead of admitting their mistakes and calling for a red flag until they could figure it out, NASCAR decided to keep the race under caution and took away valuable laps that could have had an impact on the finish of the race.

NASCAR’s confusion impacted the race dramatically. Not only were drivers trying to gain laps back during the caution, but they potentially changed the race outcome by taking away laps just so they could straighten out their own mistakes. Drivers are under enough pressure in the Chase and NASCAR screwing up the race order makes it even worse.