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The black helicopters are sweeping in, folks. Somewhere in the heart of central Alabama, the conspiracy is alive and well. NASCAR hates Denny Hamlin. And Tony Raines. And Reed Sorenson. And fill-in-driver-here who had to pit under the last caution because of the extended yellow.What happened, NASCAR? Did the red flag that your flagman uses fly out of the flagstand? Was it lost in transit from Phoenix? Did the helmet capers get a hold it?
The reason for the second-to-last caution was David Reutimann, who had been having a stellar day, either lost a motor or a rear end gear. Reutimann had to make the show on time, so he was likely running a qualifying package due to the impound race -- causing the failure.
Anyways, Reutimann's problem happened while the field was going into turn 1 of lap 185, meaning the field would take the yellow at the line for lap 186. Reutimann put down quite a bit of oil across the tri-oval, leaving a nice mess to clean up. A red flag would have stopped the cars on the backstretch during lap 186. With the red flag removed, pit road would have been open that time by and the one lap to green could have been given on lap 187. With a green-white-checkered finish starting on lap 188, the race would have finished at lap 190 or sooner.
But that didn't happen, and the teams that gambled with their fuel mileage were completely thrown under the bus. Had a red flag come out, maybe some of the teams wouldn't have made it, but some may have made it to the checkers.
Instead, NASCAR kept the yellow flag on the speedway, causing the cars to circle for track cleanup during which two restarts were waived off. The result was finally a green flag at lap 191, nearly 8 miles past the scheduled finish. A caution that ended the race off of turn 2 probably saved some drivers who didn't pit from running out of fuel during the final 3.5 miles.
It was a questionable call, to say the least. It really is time for NASCAR to lay down a flat rule for when to display the red flag. Shouldn't an attempt be made to finish a race as close to the scheduled distance as possible?
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