NASCAR distracting fans from the real problem?

Is NASCAR intentionally having fans ignore the real issue from the finish of Sunday’s All-Star Race at Texas Motor Speedway?

Sunday night’s NASCAR Cup Series All-Star Race at Texas Motor Speedway will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

While the consistent tire issues and the overall lack of passing led to calls for NASCAR to abandon the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) oval in Fort Worth, Texas permanently, especially since other races at 1.5-mile ovals have been incredible with the new Gen 7 car, much of the criticism stemmed from the way the conclusion of the event was handled.

Unlike normal Cup Series races, when the next flag ends the race after the white flag is displayed, the rule for Sunday’s race for $1 million was changed. This race could not end under caution, even if the white flag had already flown.

Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney held a sizable lead over Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin when he took the white flag, and he maintained that lead and took the checkered flag, presumably as the race winner.

However, NASCAR called a caution as Blaney was just yards award from crossing the finish line.

The caution came after JTG Daugherty Racing’s Ricky Stenhouse Jr. made contact with the wall in turn two — contact that did not even come close to rising to the level of “caution”, however.

So even though Blaney took the checkered flag, NASCAR determined that he was not yet the winner of the $1 million prize.

But because Blaney did indeed take the checkered flag, he believed he was the race winner and took down his window net. Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the window net, he couldn’t reattach it before the ensuing restart.

Fortunately, Blaney did go on to win the race, prompting some to joke that he should have been given $2 million, not $1 million, for effectively winning it twice.

However, the window net situation was seen by many as a controversy, including Hamlin. Should Blaney have been black flagged for the window net issue? By rule, yes, because of the safety issue it presented.

While Hamlin admitted that Blaney was the rightful race winner and should have been considered the winner the first time, he and many others were upset that NASCAR basically threw aside safety and the rule book simply because they made a bad decision — one they later admitted was a bad decision — to throw, for lack of a better word, a “fake” caution.

But was the whole window net controversy only a distraction from the real issue — the obvious fact that NASCAR had absolutely no need to throw the caution, other than to try to manufacturer an “exciting finish” to conclude an extremely disappointing event, just as Blaney was coming to the finish line with nobody else in sight?

Dale Earnhardt Jr. seems to think so.

Earnhardt was far from the only individual who held this belief, and it’s one that’s hard to argue against.

The easiest and most “common sense” solution would have been to allow Blaney and the #12 team to fix the window net and also allow him to retain P1 for the restart, one which should have never happened anyway.

Generally speaking, when a driver crosses the finish line and takes the checkered flag, he has every reason in the world to undo his window net, as he has literally won the race. So the suggestion that Blaney “made a mistake” is laughable. He should have been allowed to effectively hit the reset button without losing anything.

This also would have eliminated the clear safety violation which NASCAR was willing to overlook, though that wasn’t much of a surprise to some, given another recent ruling involving Hamlin.

Instead, a restart that never should have taken place took place, and it took place with the race leader in violation of a safety protocol. It was a completely avoidable mess to wrap up an all-time terrible event.