March 29, 2010
By Matthew Pizzolato
Matthew Pizzolato
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Last week at Martinsville, Jeff Gordon came agonizingly close to his 83rd career victory – 100 feet away from the finish line – only to have it snatched away by a yellow flag.
NASCAR has been accused of throwing "phantom" debris cautions before, could this be the case again? Did they want to create a good finish for the fans that remained for an extra day to watch a race postponed by rain? Jeff Gordon certainly seemed to think so.
“It was pretty obvious to me NASCAR wanted to do a green-white-checkered finish. There were cars blowing tires, hitting the wall – they weren't throwing the caution. One spinout and they threw the caution in the blink of an eye. I think it was pretty obvious what they wanted,” Gordon was quoted as saying in a David Newton article for espn.com.
For a competitor to be upset about not winning a race comes as no surprise at all and Gordon was more than just a little perturbed, making his feelings known by way of a brief profanity laced tirade over the radio. After the race, he admitted his disappointment.
"It's frustrating," Gordon said in the Newton article. "The most frustrating thing is we were coming off here to take the white and all we had to do is get to that line, and a hundred feet from it that caution comes out."
Gordon led four times for a total of 92 laps and was in the lead on the lap that counted most, but it was not to be.
Due to NASCAR's new Green – White – Checkered rule, where officials will make as many as three attempts to finish the race under green flag conditions, as well as the new "Boy's have at it" policy, the racing in the final laps got a little rough.
On the restart, Gordon was run into from behind by Matt Kenseth and was forced up the track, allowing eventual race winner Denny Hamlin to slip past underneath. Gordon then returned the favor by putting Kenseth into the wall, thereby eliminating any chance the 17 car had of winning the race.
Perhaps instead of being focused on keeping Kenseth from winning, he should have tried chasing down the Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano, and he might have had a chance at scoring a victory.
NASCAR has been doing everything in its power recently to restore fan interest in stockcar racing and perhaps win back some of its core fans that it's alienated in recent years. So it should come as no surprise that officials want to "manufacture" excitement into the races. That's what all the new rule changes were designed to do in the first place.
The 18 car hit the wall on the final lap and was headed back down into oncoming traffic, and with cars jockeying for position on the final lap, NASCAR felt a caution flag was needed. It's as simple as that. There was no malicious intent to keep Gordon from winning a race; he was just an unfortunate victim of circumstance.
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