There has been a great deal of controversy on social media in this young NASCAR season over late race cautions. Both of the races run so far have seen some last lap or overtime caution flags due to wrecks on the track.
Last week at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the overtime ending looked like a repeat of 2024 when Daniel Suarez edged out Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch for the closest win in NASCAR history. A crash behind Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, and Carson Hocevar came to a halt when officials threw the caution flag for a crash back in the field.
Whether is it a normal final lap in the race or an overtime shootout, if the caution flag is thrown after the while flag comes out, the race is deemed over and the lead at the time the caution comes out is named the winner. In the case of the Atlanta race, that winner was Christopher Bell.
Head of Competition Elton Sawyer spoke on NASCAR’s decisions on SiriusXM Radio saying, “if we don’t throw the caution, you’re incentivizing the competitors to drive through that. So, if you look back over the last week or so and nine superspeedway races that we’ve had if you count the duels and ARCA race. Everybody is on top of each other, so the element of a last lap caution is there, as we’ve seen.”
He added, “it’s on the sanctioning body to make sure that we do our absolute best to get to the start/finish line under green, but there is conditions and situations where we need to throw that. And we’re going to error more on throwing it than not.”