NASCAR waited too long to throw the last of its many cautions

On race days, we hold a little chat over on the main Yahoo! Sports NASCAR page. Big hit, you need to come check it out. It's like watching the race with several thousand friends. One of many memes that's burbled up out of these chats is the "Guess the Caution" game: when a race has been running too long under green, or when we're nearing the end of the race, the guesses begin -- "debris in Turn 2," "oil in Turn 3," et cetera. And more often than not, our commenters can see the future -- speak of the debris, and the debris appears.

Several times late in the Sylvania 300 on Sunday, "debris" appeared -- although, as I recall, not on camera, strangely enough -- bringing the field back together and forcing Mark Martin to outduel Juan Pablo Montoya not once, but twice.

All well and good, but it was the final caution that caused the most controversy. On the final lap of the race, AJ Allmendinger spun in Turn 4 and sat sideways just short of the start-finish line. Normally that's cause for an instant caution, but this time, NASCAR waited ... and waited ... and waited ... and meanwhile, the field was whipping around the track, right back toward the helpless Dinger. (See the video here.)

Finally, NASCAR threw the caution and everybody slowed down, but with barely one turn to size up the track ahead, nearly everybody piled into Dinger like he was holding closed the door on the last day of school. You can see him right there in the little red circle above.

Thing is, Mark Martin had already checked out on Juan Pablo Montoya. There was no reason not to throw the caution far earlier than they did. (It appears Montoya is close to Martin in the photo above, but only because Martin had slowed up faster.)

Ironically, New Hampshire is the place where the "Lucky Dog" rule was created because Dale Jarrett was stalled facing sideways during a race in 2003. The rule was meant to prevent racing back to the start/finish line and t-boning the hapless driver sitting there. Fortunately, everybody was able to dodge Dinger, but it wasn't easy. And if Montoya had been any closer, it could have been disastrous. As it was, it was a dumb play that thankfully didn't blow up into a nightmare.