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Debbi Willis, Daw613@bigfoot.com

Discretionary Cautions

Nascar is full of trends in recent years, as though attempting to create every potential change available or worse yet, create better marketing avenues with every opportunity. Recently, I've detected a trend that leaves me wondering, "what gives?" Racing is like any sport with certain rules and regulations with safety and strong competition foremost in mind (at least we hope so, but I've my doubts after today!) Inconsistency doesn't fit with "rules and regulations" since consistency is the foundation of order in any organization. Discretionary cautions have become an alarming trend of late. The word discretionary is defined according to Webster as left to discretion; regulated by one's own discretion or judgement; i.e. discretionary powers of an appointing officer or in this case, Nascar officials. I say discretionary because it's hard to tell if and when a yellow flag will be thrown anymore or sometimes, why it was when it is!

Yellow flag versus Red flag debates raged with good reason during the '98 season. A multitude of inconsistent decisions by the officials at various races caused fans to wonder about favoritism for Golden Boy Gordon when the decisions provided opportune breaks for him. Last week at Martinsville, cautions were thrown a record 17 times for just about everything until the last quarter of the race. Green flag racing had been reduced to short track dashes between the flags as the race wore on. As the bewitching hour of designated time for TV coverage drew near, suddenly we see spinouts that manage to right themselves as cars dodged them with nary a caution flag waved! What was different about the end of the race compared to the beginning? Obviously, TV time and coverage was overdrawn and baseball was on the heels of the race. I guess they needed it finished faster when it ran on too long.

Next on the schedule was Talledega, the biggest and the fastest track on the schedule. 'Dega is infamous for it's "Big One" crashfests and Nascar is on an eternal quest to control the speeds in the name of "safety". I find it far less safe racing 3x3 around Talledega with cars practically tied together with even smaller restrictor plates now! Like a game of checkers, all the cars lined up, got up to speed and then it was just a matter of who could "jump" who and get where! More puzzling than the new restrictor plate decision to reduce qualifying speeds by 20 years, was the lame caution thrown on lap 132 for Kenny Wallace's sour engine. Within moments of the restart on lap 138, the "Big One" occurred courtesy of a bad rookie move. Of course, this cut the field in half and tightened everything up again, with everyone having opportunities to pit and refresh the cars. All Jack Roush's fuel mileage schemes were for naught then. I had to wonder how come Wallace's sour engine brought out the flag when both DJ and Hamilton's gasless apron laps didn't in the first half of the race?

One discretionary caution flag changed the whole face of the race. With 50 laps to go, Talledega was without an infamous "Big One" wreck and was accomplishing the assumed goal of Nascar for close-knit safe racing. Roush's strategies were instantly disposed of and another different winner for the season surfaced, breaking another record for Nascar and Gordon's highly touted 13 race winless streak. As expected, Dale Earnhardt was less than happy with restrictor plate racing, and even less happy being further restricted. I think it's safe to expect that reaction anytime speed is restrained for Dale! Mark Martin tried to fly like the wind to stay ahead of everyone, and wisely refused DJ's "deal" request for the lead points knowing full well, holding the lead anyhow was precarious at best! DJ wisely got out of the way finally when he realized Gordon wasn't going to settle for following him as neither was Skinner going to just follow Gordon without making his presence known! Remember, Skinner said he'd wreck his mother for position after his last altercation with his teammate. Points leader Bobby Labonte obviously bit his tongue when queried in his post race interview, thinking silence the better part of valor at that point. And Gordon fans are calling this race the best race ever on restrictor plates, naturally and the media is touting the restrictor plate close-knit racing as the kind of racing fans want to see. Is it really though?

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