Catchfence

It has long been an issue with NASCAR – the tightness of control the sanctioning body maintains in its rule packages. Having the tightest rules in racing has long been a major reason for the sport’s competitive depth and resulting growth in popularity. The tightness of control, though, was usually an issue in terms of the templates, the specifications of the cars, and other technical issues; as far as the officiating tower for the actual races, the issue of control has not been quite as contentious an issue.

Certainly the sport has seen cases of controversial calls from the tower, in races like the 1969 Atlanta 500 and a rash of on-track penalties and the 1975 Pocono 500 and a tardy black flag to a smoking David Pearson, flagged with two to go with a three-lap grace period allowed for obedience and thus no bite to the penalty. Penalties for restarts have been a periodic issue, such as at Martinsville in 1997 and a black flag that cost Rusty Wallace.

The Sears Point 350, however, raises an continuing issue of the soundness of the officiating tower and the degree to which it controls the racing. The issue that has the followers of the sport – fans and media alike – was the decision to drop race leader Marcos Ambrose out of the lead because he stopped momentarily on the track under yellow and then resumed speed. NASCAR dropped him back based on a “maintain pace” rule that was ignored by NASCAR at the 2008 Michigan 400 and 2007 Kansas 400; Dale Earnhardt Jr. was the beneficiary at the Michigan 400 and Greg Biffle the beneficiary at Kansas. Ramsey Poston – he of the “if it’s the last lap anything goes” quote in Regan Smith’s Talladega penalty in 2008 – was the point man in arguing NASCAR’s case, and the credibility of his argument here isn’t any greater than that used in previous NASCAR officiating controversies.

It illustrates the bigger issue that the officiating tower is making calls and been given a level of control of the racing it objectively has no business having. Even before the Ambrose imbroglio Sears Point was yet another example of the sanctioning body’s illegitimate pit speed limit rule with numerous teams flagged for speeding on pit road even though it was impossible to tell the difference between those like Bobby Labonte who were flagged and those like Juan Montoya who were periodically nose-to-nose with other cars coming out of the pits and were not flagged.

The pit speed limit rule of course came about because of the rule – now 22 seasons old – of closing pit road when the yellow comes out. It is a case study of mission creep usurping credible rules writing and pit speeding penalties have so often been dubious as to illustrate the lack of credibility of the rule.

The “maintain pace” rule and pit speed limits both combined to display a certain lack of credibility for the sanctioning body in this Sears Point 350, and they continue to illustrate that the officiating tower has too much control of the racing as opposed to the racers. Why it remains NASCAR’s business to police how fast cars go down and out of pit road is a mystery; why NASCAR has to maintain the farce of closing pit road – when the pre-1989 approach made pit road safer thanks to lessening of pit crowding – is a mystery; just what qualifies as not maintaining pace was a mystery twice before in the last four seasons and is a bigger mystery now.

And the issue goes beyond here – the sport still has no credible reason for yellow-line rules at the plate tracks and no credible reason for not racing back to the stripe to determine the running order under yellow – in the last ten years both contributed to numerous examples of the wrong driver being given the win.

“It happened to me at Montreal,” Robby Gordon said after finishing second at Sears Point. The officiating tower’s control of the racing has happened to the likes of Tony Stewart, Ward Burton (losing a late lead at Talladega in 2003 because of a scoring loop), Kasey Kahne, Regan Smith, and now Marcos Ambrose.

It’s long past time for NASCAR to take away from the officiating tower a heavy degree of control of the racing – the officiating tower has no business policing whther racers race above or below yellow lines, the running order except at the stripe, when cars pit under caution and how fast they go (the only time it should be an issue is real punishment of brushbackers), or determining based on nothing that a car is not maintaining pace under caution. All that is the business of the racers – if they pit at a speed that the pit road can handle, it is not supposed to matter if its over 35 MPH at Sears Point or 65 MPH at most big tracks; if they dive into the pits before taking the yellow, it not only is not supposed to matter to the tower but it should be encouraged to lessen pit crowding; if they stop on the track for a moment and then resume speed, it’s not NASCAR’s business to drop them back in the field.

Marcos Ambrose was robbed. Period.