NASCAR insider questions decision to throw caution for Martin Truex Jr. incident at Michigan

In one of the more controversial moments during Monday’s FireKeepers Casino 400, Martin Truex Jr. brought out the caution when it looked like the race was all but over, pounding the wall but still being able to drive his car to pit road.

Due to Truex Jr. being able to get his car across the track without issue, many wondered, especially race leader Tyler Reddick, why NASCAR was so quick on the trigger. NASCAR insiders Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi tried to make sense of it on the latest episode of The Teardown following the race.

“It would be the decision by NASCAR to throw the caution from Martin Truex Jr., hitting the wall late in the race,” Bianchi said, regarding a moment that changed the race. “I think, when NASCAR looks back on this, they’re going to probably want that one back. I don’t think that warranted a caution in that moment.

“Particularly, if you look at the incident earlier, yesterday, with Austin Cindric, Austin Cindric slammed the wall, like pancaked it hard, not a caution, race continued on. I didn’t understand at this moment why Martin Truex Jr. hitting the wall warranted a caution flag. He was able to continue on, etc, etc. And then you look at the domino effect from that, the restarts and everything else. It spun into, you know, William Byron, is he going to pit or not going to pit? Is Tyler Reddick going to get a race — is this going to be another race where Tyler Reddick doesn’t win, right?

“Then, you look at the regular season points battle we just talked about, there was an incident between Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney in one of the overtime restarts, and that impacted Chase negatively, because he lost a bunch of points. So to me, we look at key decisions of this race, the decision by NASCAR to throw a caution for Martin Truex Jr. really stands out.”

It certainly was a head-scratcher, after the way NASCAR has called similar incidents throughout the season. As Gluck noted in his response, it almost took the win away from Reddick, and it completely changed the regular season points battle in the process.

“Yeah, I mean, the implications there — I mean,  it almost changed the winner outcome,” Gluck added. “But yeah. Man, I just thought it was getting to a point recently, even earlier this year, where it was like, ‘Yeah, NASCAR doesn’t really throw that stuff anymore. You know, they’re really trying to stay out of it. They’re really trying not to have an impact on the race with those kinds of quick trigger cautions late in a race.’

“And then one happened today, and yeah, it was — I’m glad that it didn’t (change the winner). It was a total chaos, but it certainly changed some things.”

At the least, Tyler Reddick was able to hang on for the win through two overtime restarts, but incidents following the caution had a major effect on both the playoff standings and overall Cup Series points. For a wreck where there likely didn’t need to be a caution, that’s going to frustrate some drivers.