On a day plagued by rain, Sunday’s Food City 500 in Support of Steve Byrnes and Stand Up To Cancer at Bristol Motor Speedway was slowed in the closing laps of the race by a lengthy caution and a brief red flag period. However, some drivers wished NASCAR had thrown the red flag right away, instead of logging laps under yellow.
When the final caution of the night flew on Lap 495, the field was slowed behind the pace car as track workers cleaned the incident involving Carl Edwards, Kurt Busch, Sam Hornish Jr., Paul Menard and Justin Allgaier. As the cars circled the track under caution, rain returned to the speedway and began to dampen the racing surface.
Instead of stopping the race right away, NASCAR ran at least five laps under caution as pace car driver Brett Bodine and the NASCAR tower discussed the track conditions and the amount of rain hitting the track. While running under caution, many drivers became concerned about fuel as the race went into overtime.
Running third at the time, Austin Dillon was forced to give up his track position and come to pit road to top off the fuel. Moments after Dillon brought his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet in for service, NASCAR brought the field to pit road, red flagged the race and went to work drying the track.
While many of the drivers were pleased to end the race under green flag conditions, some questioned why NASCAR did not red flag the race sooner.
“I love the fact that that race ended under green. What makes no sense to me is when it started raining hard that they ran lap after lap after lap under caution,” said third-place finisher Jeff Gordon. “I think that they did the right thing, but go ask the 3 car. I don’t think it was right that they ran that many laps under caution when they started to lose the track.”
With his car overheating, Dillon’s car was not getting the best fuel mileage of the night and he was forced to hit pit road.
“Sitting there at the end restarting third, and we were overheating there, so our fuel mileage was going up when we were overheating like that. I thought they should have red flagged it while we were sitting out there and it was raining,” said Dillon. “As soon as we ran out (of gas), they red flagged it. It was like they had to wait for one car to run out and it was us. It was unfortunate.”
Gordon believes NASCAR could have stopped the cars earlier to give each team a “fair shot to go finish” the race.
“I don’t know if it needed to be a green-white-checkered, either, but I can promise you I’d have a whole different opinion had I run out of fuel,” he said. “I think we all want to see the fans see, especially a day like today where they stay here … for nine hours, I mean, that’s commitment, and you want to give everything back to them. You don’t want it to end under caution. But you’ve got to make sense of the whole situation and what’s going on from a competition standpoint, as well. So I think they could have managed that slightly better, but all in all, it turned out pretty good.”
VIDEO: Carl Edwards, Kurt Busch bring out late caution at Bristol
