Mandatory Cautions – A really BAD idea

The plan to use Mandatory Cautions in the NACSAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) is one of the craziest and dumbest ideas that NASCAR has ever come up with.  NASCAR has given no reasoning behind instituting the mandatory caution periods.   I am all for experimentation and trying new things to see how they work.  It is good that NASCAR has a the Truck Series to experiment with.  I see no way that this will add to the actual quality of the race.  What this looks like to me is an attempt to create chaos.  And this it will do.  Not letting the race go longer that 20 minutes will never allow a car that is performing well to create a big lead and will never allow the cars to spread out.  This is great if all you are looking for is a restart every 20 minutes to bunch the cars up.  This will in the end create more accidents and possibly more mass pile ups.  I am sure that there are people that watch just for the crashes.  That is fine.  But manufacturing them seems counter productive to me.

The idea is that a 20 minute clock will start when the race starts.  When the countdown reaches zero there will be a caution flag no matter what is going on in the race.   After the caution period and there is a restart in the race the countdown timer will start again and this will go on for the rest of the race.  The clock will be turned off when there are 20 laps left in the race.  No reason for this was given either.  They are probably doing this because in the last 20 laps of a race there is usually several cautions that are thrown there due to increased aggressive driving.  So the need to manufacture the chaos is eliminated because the drivers already do this on there own.

I am not sure how this idea came to be.  I am sure one night after work the NASCAR big wigs were hanging out somewhere and just chatting and in what ever state of being they were.  One of them blurts out.  I have it.  I have a way to create bunched up cars with out having to ask a driver to throw a water bottle on the track.  Mandatory Cautions ever 20 minutes.   It was then that the rest of the crowd cheered.  Now normally when you come up with an idea that sounds great the night before you wake up with a clear mind and say wow what was I thinking.  You toss the idea aside and say wow I am glad I did not let this idea get out.   Not in this case.  With the idea for the mandatory cautions not only did the kick the idea to the curb but when they woke up in the morning they said wow I was right, this idea a pure racing chaos gold.  Then even after meetings to discuss the idea it seems that no one said wait guys this will make it a little more like WWE then a real racing sport.

Another thought is that they are trying this in order to give either more commercial breaks or to give breaks that are close to assigned times.  While I could understand how this might help in attracting advertisers.  The problem with it is that it makes it more of a controlled or scripted.  Then the results of the race come in to doubt.  It will start to look like they are trying to dictate who wins and where people finish in the race.  It will certainly take some of the natural flow out of the race.

I see no way that this can be a good thing.  I applaud them for coming up with new ideas.  This is not an idea that they should have even told people they had considered.  Instead the implemented it.