NASCAR fans are known for jumping at the chance to take something that seems all too convenient and turning into a full-blown conspiracy with tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, and that has been true on more than one occasion already during the 2026 Cup Series season.
It was perhaps most prevalent in Sunday's Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway, when a caution flag for pieces of Ty Dillon's brake rotor on the race track came to the aid of Hendrick Motorsports' Chase Elliott.
Elliott had come into the pits earlier than everybody else in the third stage, after scoring no stage points, for new tires in an attempt to gain track position, knowing that whatever advantage he would have after the pit cycle was complete would eventually evaporate due to the tire advantage of his rivals.
Elliott fell to second place behind Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin, who had been dominant and won both stage one and stage two up to that point, when the caution flag came out.
Chase Elliott benefits after debris caution
Because there was no obvious cause at first, fans immediately jumped to the ridiculous conclusion that NASCAR was rigging the race for the sport's most popular driver, because that's what NASCAR fans are known to do when something just so happens to benefit Elliott – even though he has been on the bad end of plenty of ill-timed yellows before as well.
NASCAR actually waited probably a little bit longer than they should have to throw the caution; Elliott was still in the lead when Dillon had his incident.
Fox Sports commentator Clint Bowyer knew exactly where fans' minds went the moment the yellow flag flew, and he tried his best to shoot down the conspiracy theories right away when the rotor was shown on television.
"That's a piece of rotor right there," he said. "All the conspiracy [theories] out there are out the window. It is on pit road. ... if it's on pit road, there's some on the race track too."
The reason for the caution was obvious once it was actually shown; it wasn't fabricated. That said, you can sort of understand part of NASCAR fans' frustration, because it did take Fox Sports a very long time to show the piece of debris on pit road.
But Fox Sports has been notorious for missing on-track action this year and being slow to show what happened, and that has nothing to do with NASCAR manipulating outcomes.
Even earlier in the race, it took close to a minute for television viewers to find out that Cody Ware's spin was the cause of the afternoon's first caution, which ended the first stage under yellow.
Chase Elliott capitalizes on caution timing
The Dillon caution resulted in both Elliott and his closest rivals coming into the pits for new tires, effectively putting them back on the same strategy and nullifying the significant tire advantage they would have otherwise had over him.
But Elliott had still fallen behind Hamlin by that point, and he still went on to beat Hamlin in a straight-up head-to-head fight to the finish.
NASCAR fans also have a knack for criticizing Alan Gustafson for his lack of bold calls and his willingness to settle for "good points days" for himself and the No. 9 team. So the fact that he made one of the best strategy calls we've seen so far this year couldn't have possibly happened; no, he couldn't possibly be right.
Nope; the race absolutely had to have been rigged, just like it was when Dale Earnhardt Jr. won 100 races in a row because he too was the sport's most popular driver.
You get the idea.
At the end of the day, it's a comical reaction to a perfectly reasonable scenario, but that's just a product of social media; NASCAR certainly isn't the only league accused of rigging outcomes. Anybody can say anything they feel like, and anybody can make a complete fool of themselves whenever they fell like. And a lot of times, that's exactly what happens.