NASCAR would kill for a good finish, just ask David Ragan.
In what was supposed to be a green-white-checkered flag finish to Sunday’s Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway, Ragan’s Ford spun out and stopped in between turns one and two at the tight .526-mile short track.
Meantime, the leaders were charging to the area of Ragan’s stalled Ford in what could be considered a blind-spot of the track to those fighting for position at the end of the race.
So as race-leader Jimmie Johnson, second-place Ryan Newman, third-place Jeff Gordon and the rest of the field raced into the first turn at race speed, Ragan sat there helpless with the driver’s side facing traffic, probably with his eyes closed hoping nobody hit him.
Finally, after half the field went by the crippled car, NASCAR finally hit the yellow light, which ended the race because NASCAR rules call for only one attempt at a green-white-checkered flag finish.
It shouldn’t be surprising that Ragan was not available for comment after the race. He was probably being treated for “battle fatigue.”
He was so “shell-shocked” General George Patton probably wouldn’t have slapped him.
OK, so maybe it wasn’t that bad and maybe this is overdone hyperbole and OK, it’s over the top to make such a judgment about NASCAR’s long delay in ending the race under caution, but for a sport that has taken much credit for safety innovations, it avoided what could have been a disastrous situation.
Part of NASCAR’s dilemma is it often balances safety with entertainment. Those in charge of the Nextel Cup Series never want to end a race under yellow, and that spawned the green-white-checkered rule several years ago to ensure that a contest would be decided in a race to the finish.
But twice this year the entertainment side has taken priority over safety.
In the season-opening Daytona 500 as Mark Martin and Kevin Harvick raced to the checkered flag on the final lap, Kyle Busch’s car went sideways in front of the rest of the field, triggering a massive crash most often remembered when Clint Bowyer’s Chevrolet flipped upside down and caught on fire.
NASCAR waited until Harvick had nipped Martin at the finish line before hitting the yellow light.
But the point of a caution flag is to alert all the cars on the track of a treacherous situation.
That was the case in the Daytona 500 and it was still the same in Sunday’s Subway 500.
“I saw the yellow come out and at the same time looked over to the left and his nose was sitting toward the infield crossways on the race track,” Newman said. “It was a great call by NASCAR (when they threw the yellow).
“We would have liked to have had the opportunity to race to the finish but it would have been pretty hairy for everybody, especially David Ragan where he was sitting.”
NASCAR’s entertainment edict is so strong, it has even affected the media so when someone asked Gordon if there should be more than one attempt at finishing the race under green, the four-time Cup champion shot back with a direct answer.
“Yeah, we should just have more cautions and more spins and more wrecks,” Gordon said. “C’mon. Cautions breed cautions and when you stack us up and give us one to go, people are going to crash.”
NASCAR contends that safety is at the forefront of most of its decisions. It even scrapped a generation of cars to come up with what is known as the Car of Tomorrow, which is a bigger, boxier car that has safety features designed to protect the driver.
That car was used in Sunday’s race at Martinsville, but there is a bigger safety feature that can be used that would have avoided any type of controversy:
The yellow caution light turned on in a timely manner.