After Saturday night’s NASCAR race at Richmond, third-place finisher Tony Stewart questioned the late debris caution thrown by NASCAR – a caution which cost him the race win.
NASCAR: People Who Want To See Reason For Debris Cautions Are ‘Needy’
Stewart said the caution was thrown for a plastic bottle that was “out of the groove” on the backstretch and had been “sitting there for eight laps.”
NASCAR, though, said there was a piece of aluminum on the track and the caution was warranted. FOX didn’t show the debris on TV, but one of NASCAR’s top officials said Tuesday night it wasn’t necessary to do so.
“Sometimes, some people are a little more needy than others and they want to see that for whatever reason,” NASCAR vice president of competition Robin Pemberton told reporters attending a function at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “And whatever their thought process and beliefs with the governing body (are), they think they need proof.
“Sometimes you see (the debris) and sometimes you don’t, and that’s based on TV coverage, basically.”
But Pemberton said FOX “didn’t do anything wrong” and he doesn’t mind TV not showing the reason for debris caution because, “I don’t have an issue with (the reason for the caution).”
He also said NASCAR does not keep the debris as evidence of why it called the caution.
“We don’t inventory it, we don’t tag it and put it a library anywhere or anything,” he said. “It’s just trash.”
So what was the debris at Richmond? Pemberton said there may have been a water bottle on the track, but there was also a beer can or piece of aluminum that had been run over.
“A lot of times, you call it for one thing and then you pick that up and anything else that’s in the vicinity,” he said.
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