Drivers call out NASCAR for inconsistency with throwing cautions – FOXSports.com

– This is Saturday night. Derrike Cope into the wall less than five laps to go. This is with Martin Truex, Jr. leading this thing, all right? You can see the frustration for Cole Pearn saying, you got to be kidding me. We were going to win our fifth race of the year. So then post race we saw some tweets that were very, very interesting.

– Yep, Adam. So Tom Jensen sent this out, “imagine if what happened at Richmond Raceway happens at Homestead-Miami.” And that of course is the season finale. And Dale, Jr. replied, “last year at Homestead a questionable late yellow cost driver the championships. Same driver announced his retirement a few months later.”

All right, let’s see exactly what Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is talking about. Of course, he’s talking about Carl Edwards at Homestead. Edwards is leading in the race. The caution comes out, which then sets up the restart. And in that restart, Carl Edwards and Joey Logano, they get caught up together. They both wreck. Their championship possibilities are completely done.

– So we pointed out what happened late in the race at Richmond with Martin Truex, Jr. leading. He was leading late at Darlington, cuts a tire, hits the wall. Now, when Cope hit the wall at Richmond, caution came out.

Here, Truex hits the wall, no caution. Denny Hamlin drives by and goes on to victory lane. Explain why there was so much concern post race for the 78 when you consider that one week earlier we didn’t get a caution and Saturday night we did?

– Well, there is a lot of concern out of the 78 camp because he missed out on another chance for a win. You probably didn’t hear a lot of concern from those second, third, fourth place guys. But I think the biggest thing to note here is NASCAR is a little inconsistent from the beginning of the race to the end.

But it’s a judgment call on a lot of these calls. And they’ve had judgment calls from day one. And I think that they’re a little more exposed today, and we talk about them. You have great video, and you have great audio to go with all of these video clips. And so we talk about them a little bit more. But they’ve made inconsistent calls, and that’s just the way it is when you’re having a judgment call.

– You know, Larry, it’s not– NASCAR’s not the only sanctioning body to just make a mistake. We see it in the NCAA tournament. We see these mistakes happen when judgment calls are involved. But when there’s so much on the line, should there be some of that judgment taken out?

– Yeah I don’t know how we get there in NASCAR. Because no matter what, it will be human judgment whether to put the caution out or not put it out. And unlike stick-and-ball sports, if they don’t throw the caution, it changes the game. If they throw the caution, it changes the game, where in stick-and-ball sports, whether it be football or baseball, they just stop the game, review it, and then move on.

I don’t know how you accomplish that in NASCAR. And the one that really blew me away the other night was our second call [INAUDIBLE] Matt Kenseth just slid the tires getting in the corner, a little bit of smoke. And they threw the caution.

– We don’t have time to go there now, Larry. But thanks for bringing that.