NASCAR will control switches to caution lights

DOVER, Del. - NASCAR president Mike Helton said Friday the sanctioning body has taken control of the switches for the caution lights away from the flagstand.

The switches will only be located in the control tower during races for all of NASCAR's three major divisions.

The decision comes after a mistake in the Infineon 200 Craftsman Truck Series race at Lowe's Motor Speedway last month where the caution lights came on and leader Carl Edwards slowed.

	Mike Helton

The lights, allegedly turned on by the backup flagman, were quickly turned off, and there was no caution.

Edwards ended up losing the race, and NASCAR later admitted it was wrong. The flagstand will no longer be able to turn on the caution lights but can still wave the caution flag.

"No. 1, we're moving all the switches to the lights to the control tower so that that switch can be controlled along with the command to give the caution and the electronic scoring system that keys off of the moment the caution occurs," Helton said at Dover International Speedway.

"We're also addressing with the folks in the flagstand and the guys in the corners that hold caution flags to back up the electronics of the lights and what have you," Helton said. "We have to have redundancy in order to prevent mistakes that can be made, from breakdown in communication to breakdown in wiring."

Helton said NASCAR officials spoke with the flagmen for the three national series and told them that the sanctioning body prefers the control tower - where the event director and the series director are usually located - to call for a caution, "But if you have any doubt about that, and you do that, just let us know you did it."

Helton said the procedure for calling cautions should be fair to the competitors, but mistakes still can be made. Helton cited his time as a high school football official as proof human error enters into the equation.

"I blew the whistle a couple times when I shouldn't have," Helton said. "That's the nature of sports when you have humans officiating humans."

Since last September, when NASCAR decided to freeze the field when the caution is displayed, questions have arisen as to when a caution is official. Helton said it's pretty simple: the caution starts as soon as the light comes on or the yellow flag is waved.

"That's the beginning of the caution," Helton said. "That's pretty well understood. There are times when we will debate when a light or a flag came up, as to where a car was on the racetrack, but that's our job."

NASCAR has $1 million in scoring equipment to try to determine the exact location of every car when the caution comes out, Helton said.

"We'll do more if we have to in order to be able to do it as correctly as we can," Helton said.