I don't understand how they don't realize that they don't need to throw cautions every time a tiny piece of debris is on the track. Even before the caution that set up the green-white-checkered, it was going to be a great last couple laps watching Ambrose run down Busch.
I agree, I wasn't questioning that caution at all, he was shooting debris everywhere and then was on fire. Just in years past they'd throw a caution for a blade of grass on the track when it really wasn't needed.
The Nationwide race went almost the whole way without cautions. Doesn't look like they care to throw them on road courses. To be fair it is also a bit harder to cause debris on a road course aswell.
Also the race was quite boring until like last 15 laps, then it got all crazy and the battle for 1st was great, until the overweighted undertyred boats with incompetent drivers inside started to cause all the mess.
Congrats to Marcos for winning his first Nextel Cup race.
It really is just a cultural thing, a lot of the things are different in America compared to running on tracks in the rest of the world. From marshalling, flags in NASCAR, rescue/safety vehicles, snatch vehicles, drivers attitudes when their car is ****ed, closing pits, double file restarts, etc.
I mean in the rest of the world, if you run out of fuel, you pull off to the side and park it in as safe a place as you can, and the marshals will usually push you to safety. If your car is damaged, possibly leaking fluid and then on fire, you don't try and get back to the pits.
Remember what the SC is for - to deal with an incident that would be too dangerous to cope with while the track wasn't neutralised. Americans, perhaps with health & safety, don't seem to like dealing with things on a live track compared to others around the world. Maybe drivers don't obey local yellows(/blues...) enough? Look at the Nurburgring 24 hour race - they don't have a SC, only local yellows to deal with incidents like this, this, and this - you'd better obey or you'll be docked a lap! (2nd one from a driver's view)
Plus generally the recovery of cars are different - I can't ever imagine American marshals doing this with an Indycar! Nor do I really recall them doing live snatches with a tractor-style vehicle/JCB to get cars out of the gravel - which is strange because at some tracks they seem to have a lot of that, or for example at Road America, they seem to think it's a great idea to run a few 60mph caution laps around a 4 mile track when 1 corner under local yellows and a tractor/pickup under double waved yellows would be a better option
Maybe a lot of the tracks are built to rely on the teams in vehicles more than corner workers - perhaps a remnant from the oval side. Anyway, rant over
I agree. This time I beleive that they got it right
Exciting race, and well officiated if I do say so myself. No need to throw the yellow for David because there was nobody else behind him. Stewart crashed into traffic and therefore the caution was waranted. This is the way that I beleive it should be.
No.. I myself like the way that we run races. I mean, if you happen to be behind a crash in international racing you are penalized severily. In American racing you are given no disadvantage normaly other than the possability to receive damage. That and it's safer for track and saftey workers to clean things up.
I do beleive that it's just left over from the oval type racing, but I sort of like it that way
It's from back in the 80's when a track member was killed while in a hot track situation. They probably won't be changing it anytime soon. Tracks are only 1:10-ish anyways.