NASCAR Explains Late Race Caution at Bristol was Human Error

Human error in the flag stand was the cause of the caution to come out with two laps remaining in the Food City 500 on Sunday night at Bristol Motor Speedway. It was a long day and night at the track for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series as they fought rain throughout the day.

When it looked like Carl Edwards would cruise to the victory for Roush Fenway Racing the caution lights suddenly came on but even NASCAR officials in the tower did not know why.

The reason ended up being that a person in the flag stand leaned on the manual override switch, turning on the caution lights according to NASCAR vice president of competition Robin Pemberton. Then six seconds after the lights were turned on the flag man waved the yellow flag after NASCAR reviewed video tape of the situation Pemberton said.

Pemberton added that the flag man can wave the yellow flag even if not told to by the officials in the tower if they see a proper reason.

Rain then began to come down heavily before NASCAR could run a green-white-checkered finish and Carl Edwards was awarded the win under yellow. NASCAR ended up setting the final finishing order from the time the caution lights first came on and only had to change three positions in the whole field. Kasey Kahne ended up being the loser in the situation since his pass on Denny Hamlin and Jeff Gordon was negated. Hamlin finished sixth, Gordon seventh, and Kahne eighth.

NASCAR said they will work to make sure the situation never happens again. Under the new Chase qualifying system where race winners make the Chase an error like this could be very costly for a driver. In this situation on Sunday night everything played out okay since Edwards did not have to compete in the G-W-C finish because mother nature stepped in and made things right.

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