(WOMR file photo)
Carl Edwards won Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series race, The Food City 500, at Bristol Motor Speedway, but to do so he had to survive a couple of long rain delays and an inadvertent flicking of the caution lights at the track with three laps to go.
Edwards had opened a lead of more than four seconds when the track’s caution lights inexplicably came on with less than three laps remaining. Seconds later, a cloudburst released the hardest rain of the day or night. The late night cloudburst, and the unexplained illumination of the caution lights system with less than three laps to go, was enough to allow NASCAR to call the race.
Finishing second was Roush Fenway Racing teammate Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and finishing third was Richard Petty Motorsports’s Aric Almirola. Thus giving the blue oval, Ford, a 1-2-3 finish!
NASCAR Vice President of Competition and Racing Development Robin Pemberton attributed the light malfunction to human error; in this case, humans bundled up against the cold in layers of clothing.
“In the flag stand, it appears one of the flag people had leaned on the switch that is the manual override for the caution lights,” Pemberton said. “When the flag stand realized this, the flagman threw the caution flag (six seconds later). After that happened, we froze the field from the tower.”
Pemberton said that the area around the override switch “wasn’t secured properly” and suggested that NASCAR will learn a valuable lesson in guarding against future mishaps.
In review of The Food City 500, the race was delayed close to two hours at the outset, then for 3 hours, 19 minutes 124 laps into the race! All in all, it was a very good short track race, in spite of the five hours of rain delay!
Check out the unofficial results of The Food City 500.
By midweek some of the crewmembers may be ” boarding a westbound 747″ for their trip to SoCal!
TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!
