FMCM
48 hours after last Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race, at the Auto Club Speedway in California, the crew members of Richard Petty Motorsports-RPM are still busy rebuilding four badly damaged Dodge race cars. Amazingly,all four of their teams were caught up in a multi car crash, six laps from the end of the race, that red flagged the Pepsi 500 for a little over 20 minutes.
The cars being driven by Elliot Sadler, Reed Sorenson, A J Allmendinger and Kasey Kahne all sustained massive damage following the turn one melee. This was especially true of Allmendinger’s Dodge which actually appeared to be approximately four feet shorter after the nose of the car bounced off of the wall.
Meanwhile Kasey Kahne, driver of the #9 RPM Budweiser Dodge, is still searching for that piece of debris that created what he termed “a bogus yellow flag” on lap 236 and somehow launched two scenarios that completely ruined his day.
Sadly, Kasey Kahne is about the only one in the entire country who hasn’t seen that black colored piece of debris that was lying in the upper groove of the speedway’s backstretch . It was clearly visible on live television.
When the race restarted on lap 238 the green flag was only out for one circuit around the two mile oval before the yellow was again displayed. This time it was for an altercation involving Kurt Busch, Greg Biffle and Kahne. Busch bounced off of the wall while Biffle and Kahne went sliding across the infield grass.
But Kahne’s bad day was far from over. Once again the green flag restart only lasted one lap when the aforementioned big wreck on the frontstretch erupted on lap 244. Kahne drove is car to his pit stall after the wreck because the cockpit was filled with smoke to the point that he couldn’t find the entry way to the garage area.
It’s understandable that Kahne was at the height of anger and frustration. A sure fire top ten finish was gone and the team needed a strong finish in order to recharge their efforts in the Chase.
But what happened next was both unexpected and eyebrow raising. During comments, aired nationally both on television and radio, Kahne accused NASCAR of throwing a bogus caution flag on lap 236 and adamantly stated that there was no reason for that yellow flag because there was no debris on the track.
Kahne further pointed out that sometimes the racing gets a little boring at this track and he felt that NASCAR intentionally threw an unecessary yellow to bunch the field back up at a time when Jimmie Johnson was runing away with the event with a wide lead.
“We worked hard all day and got ourselves in a good position. Some guys had issues. I think it was going to be a good points day, but NASCAR threw a debris caution for no debris which caused Kurt Busch to screw up, which caused me to go into the grass and that caused that whole big wreck on the frontstretch. It’s disappointing because we had a bad race because of a caution to put on a show for the fans. I mean that’s a good part of our sport, we gotta keep the fans excited, but sometimes it ruins people’s days and today it was our day,” Kahne said.
On Monday NASCAR official spokesman Ramsey Poston said “there was debris on the track, it was talked about over our radios, it was identified as something being there and the caution was thrown. NASCAR is always going to put the safety of our competitors first and, when it comes to identifying something on the track, we’re always going to err on the side of caution.”
Trying to maintain composure in the face of adversity is a lesson that Kahne could learn from his boss “King” Richard Petty. During an appearance on the Speed Channel last Monday, the “King” just quietly said “it was a freak day. We had a wreck and we lost all four cars.”
