August 8, 2009

Nationwide officials take a holiday

Perhaps the Nationwide officials left the track early on Saturday to beat the traffic.

Late in the Zippo 200, Robby Gordon tried to run Joey Logano into the inside of the frontstretch wall. No harm, no foul, but when they went into turn one, Gordon turned into Logano's No. 20 car. Gordon came out on the short end of that contact by cutting his tire and NASCAR did nothing about that contact. O.k., perhaps they felt he had penalized himself for his own stupidity.

Apparently he lost a lap while repairing the car that he himself had destroyed. Back on track, Gordon reportedly ran into Logano again and NASCAR did not take action. That wasn't on camera, so we only have Logano's word for it—so it’s hard to fault NASCAR completely.

Immediately on the restart—under green—Gordon rammed Logano in the bus stop chicane and made a pass on the No. 20. Again, NASCAR did not take action.

In the next turn, he allowed Logano to get to his outside so he could run him off course in precisely the same spot in which Jason Leffler had such a scary accident in Friday's practice. No only did NASCAR fail to take action again (during the fourth incident), but they gave Gordon a "Free Pass" for the incident he had caused—despite the fact that they have a rule stating a car that is involved in the caution cannot benefit from it.

One has to wonder who was officiating this race—if anyone.

Standing outside the infield care center, Logano told reporters "you can't fix stupid; it's for life." He was speaking about Gordon, but the same comment could apply to whoever was calling this race in the tower.

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