NASCAR insider calls for APOLOGY after controversial decision at Chicago

A NASCAR insider has called for the series to apologize after controversially failing to throw a caution for almost 35 seconds following Cody Ware's crash in Chicago on Sunday.

Ware blew a rotor and crashed into the barriers at 93 miles per hour towards the end of the Cup Series race, but astonishingly, it took NASCAR almost 35 seconds to bring out the caution, after the white flag had been flown.

Given the speed and the impact of the incident, NASCAR has been heavily criticized since, and now, Freddie Kraft, who is the spotter for Bubba Wallace, has called for the series to say sorry to Ware.

“It just felt like it was two laps he was just out there and I was like wow," Kraft explained on the Door Bumper Clear podcast.

“Listen, at the end of the day, that was the first time we’ve run the whole distance at the race, every other has been shortened by time limit or whatever, I’m sure that played into it, I’m sure the fact that we don’t want to have 40 green white checkers on wet tires is playing into it, but I don’t want to hear excuses.

“I want them to come out and just say, ‘Cody we’re sorry, we will do better next time because that needed to be a caution as hard as that kid hit the wall and especially, you hear the radio, he’s asking for help as soon as he his the wall, that needed to be an instant yellow or as instant as it could and it felt like 34, 35 seconds, whatever it was was way too long.”

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NASCAR officials explain caution delay

Post-race, NASCAR officials confirmed that they did not know the impact at which Ware had hit the wall, and that if they did, the caution would have come out sooner.

Adding to the above on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday, NASCAR Cup Series Managing Director Brad Moran explained: "We didn't have the actual footage of the impact of the car getting into the tire barrier,"

"That's something we're gonna take back and we're gonna look at it. If we go back to Chicago, we'll be looking at certain areas of that race track and definitely improving that situation.

Moran continued: "If they're in the racing line, it changes the thought process. If they're out of the racing line, we give them time, which obviously we did throughout the day,"

"I still think we ended up with seven cautions for 15 laps, so we do our best to give the fans as much of that time as we can to get green flag racing.

"However, if we would have had the shot of Cody's impact there, the caution would have come out immediately. But it was thrown immediately when he dropped his window net.

"We give them the opportunity to pull out, but if we would have had that first shot, we would have known that car wasn't pulling out. That's on us, we're gonna go back, we're gonna review it, and if we go back to Chicago, we'll definitely have a different plan."

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