This year’s Brickyard 400 gave us a new winner, but it faced a lot of criticism otherwise. While most of it was around the lack of passing and drafting, lengthy cautions are another long-standing issue discussed in the sport.

But NASCAR today has changed. Fans’ plea has reached the top brass, and the sport is planning to reduce the number of laps under a caution. Especially the ones near the stage ends.

Vice president of racing communications Mike Forde recently appeared on the Hauler Talk podcast, where he mentioned officials are discussing tightening the cautions.

“If NASCAR fans are angry at the length of caution periods, I can promise you that NASCAR matches that displeasure,” Forde said, as reported by Jayski. “We want green-flag racing, and we want to get it as fast as possible.”

However, there’s a catch to this. If this fix ever happens, it’s not going to be as easy as applying a uniform rule to all tracks. Each track being different will see a different solution.

“Maybe there’s something there that we can look at where we can choose and then go immediately back to green, but it won’t work at every single track,” Forde said. “So there are several things in the hopper. It’s something that’s on our radar.”

Additionally, moving the Choose V is also an option being discussed.

Nonetheless, fans are one step ahead. After reading Forde’s solutions, they chipped in with a more radical approach rather than taking things softly.

Fans list down the clear solutions

“Cut the stage cautions, it not that hard. Fox is complaining, tell them to kick rocks and make there product better before complaining Truck race had 19 laps under yellow for stage break in 200 lap race. That is abysmal”

Fans just want the stage cautions gone. The race that the fan seems to be talking about is the Martinsville one, where a stage-ending caution took 19 laps.

While concluding his statement, Forde said, “Stage breaks are a big topic of conversation. We hear it, and we see it.”

Screenshotting this quote, another fan wrote, “We party when stage cautions are finally dead and gone.”

Another fan gave a direction solution for Forde to start with, saying, “There’s two long, pointless cautions in every race that would be a very easy place to start.”

Then, one pointed out that it’s not necessary to clean the track in every caution as it only consumes more time.

“I've always wondered why they need to go out and sweep the track every caution. Yeah there's marbles outside the groove but we don't need to waste 3 extra caution laps sweeping the wall at Texas when no one is gonna be up there unless they're already crashing,” they said.

Finally, one fan blamed modern TV schedules and commercial commitments for stretching yellow flags rather than race control alone.

“Go back 10 years watch a caution cleanup and you have your solution. So what teams might not get to pit and TV runs the race not race control. Starts times and all of it. The whole thing would be better if TV just did something’s the sport used to do.”

Written by

Suyashdeep Sason

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason