Mark Martin's spotter warned him that there had been a spin on the frontstretch, but urged his driver to stay in the throttle -- still green, still green, still green. All around New Hampshire Motor Speedway, other drivers were hearing the same thing in their helmets.

A.J. Allmendinger's car had spun on the final lap, and was slowly rolling backward, and would eventually come to rest perpendicular to the track. But there was no caution, at least not until the leaders came barreling through Turn 4, bound for a start/finish line cloaked in smoke from the accident, and a disabled vehicle sputtering back to life.

It all happened very quickly, in a few tense and chaotic seconds. Running behind the leaders, Jimmie Johnson heard the same thing everyone else did, and kept his foot on the accelerator. Coming though the final turns, he saw the caution lights illuminated. But he also knew it was the last lap. No one was exactly sure where the final scoring loop, which decides the running order under caution, began and ended.

So he had what he termed a "quick argument" with himself. Throttle back, or race to the caution flag? Johnson made the reasonable choice, checking up -- racing parlance for lifting the foot off the gas pedal -- and pulling down to the inside of the race track. No one passed him.

But up ahead, where Martin, Denny Hamlin and Juan Montoya were battling for the victory, it was a different story.

"Granted they're in position to win the race," Johnson said Tuesday. "I saw Martin check up and the other two were still heavy in the gas trying to get to the stripe. I don't really want to blame anyone. I don't think it's fair to blame anyone. It's really tough.

"We're covering a lap there in 29 seconds, so 3 or 4 seconds to try and figure out what to do, that's a portion of a lap, especially coming off [Turn] 4 toward the start/finish line. We need to do a better job. Hopefully we all learned a lesson there. Hopefully NASCAR can look at throwing [the caution] a little earlier, and drivers certainly can check up."

It was a tremendous race Sunday at Loudon, and the finish certainly took your breath away, but not exactly for the right reason. It was honestly somewhat frightening, watching the leaders storm onto the frontstretch, with Allmendinger's vehicle sitting there just waiting to be T-boned. Fortunately, the No. 44 car fired and started to move just as Martin and Hamlin dove high and Montoya ducked low to evade it.

Fortunately, NASCAR's desire to let the finish play itself out and hold the yellow flag until the last possible moment didn't result in a needless, ugly accident that would have marred the opening round of the sport's playoff series.

But even so, it was a harrowing reminder of the bad old days when NASCAR tried to let drivers police themselves when it came to racing back to a caution flag, something that ultimately didn't work. After a spate of abuses -- most infamously Robby Gordon's passing of Kevin Harvick under caution at Sonoma, which while technically legal, was widely criticized by those inside the garage -- the antiquated "gentlemen's agreement" was scrapped six years ago this week, when for obvious safety reasons NASCAR officially banned racing back to the caution. The era of scoring loops had begun. (Continued)