Cautions have become a real sore spot for the NASCAR community this season, and last weekend’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was no different. Yellow flags kept stopping the action for long stretches, and drivers and fans all had something to say about how long it took to get back to green. Former Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick noted it too, bringing it up on his podcast, claiming these delays are just hurting the sport.
Kevin Harvick laid out the problem on his show, ‘Speed on Fox’. His issue isn’t the length of the race, it’s how much time gets eaten up once a caution comes out. “At Indy it took us twelve minutes for debris caution and thirty minutes to run two laps as Ryan Blaney wrecked right after that. So we ran two laps in thirty minutes. Our caution flags take a long time for whatever reason, and twelve minutes for debris caution seems a little bit excessive,” said Harvick, clearly frustrated with NASCAR’s procedures.
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Harvick’s main point was that tightening up how NASCAR handles those cautions could save real time without altering race length. “I think that in the end, NASCAR may need to take a look at their procedures and the things that they need to do to speed up those processes as we go through the race to be able to make things happen a little bit quicker, how you open pit road, all those things,” Harvick said. “I think we could shorten the races by 30-45 minutes pretty easily just by cleaning things up, you know, with the tower. I don’t think the races need to be shorter,” he added, refuting claims of drivers like Kyle Larson & Denny Hamlin who have recently called for shorter race lengths.
The drama doesn’t end there, as NASCAR isn’t brushing off the criticism. Speaking on the ‘Hauler Talk’ podcast, NASCAR’s very own Mike Forde said the sanctioning body is just as frustrated as the fans are. “If NASCAR fans are angry at the length of caution periods, I can promise you that NASCAR matches that displeasure,” Forde said. “We want green-flag racing, and we want to get it as fast as possible.”
Part of the problem, at least for Indy, is just track size. On a 2.5-mile oval, pacing the field, opening pit road for lead lap cars, letting lapped cars pit, and setting up the choose for double-file restarts all take time & a single incident can burn four laps minimum before racing resumes. Forde said NASCAR is looking at ways to cut that down.
“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 added. “So there are several things in the hopper. It’s something that’s on our radar. It’s important to us to get back green. We keep stats religiously on the blocks of time between red, yellow and green flag racing. We’re always working to get that green number higher and higher and higher. Stage breaks are a big topic of conversation. We hear it, and we see it.”
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For now, NASCAR says trimming caution periods is something it’s actively testing, even if it won’t work the same way at every track on the schedule. How long it takes the sanctioning body to actually address these complaints on track now remains to be seen.
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