Dale Earnhardt Jr. & Casey Mears Argue How NASCAR’s Phantom Cautions Were a Necessary Evil at the Time

Stage breaks were introduced by NASCAR in 2017 as a method to make races more interesting for fans. The field is bunched up at regular intervals during a race, and the battle for the lead is restarted. Before this practice came into effect, NASCAR had a different way of executing this procedure. It forced restarts by throwing what was known as “phantom cautions.”

A race has to be halted and restarted if there is debris found on the track. NASCAR would often claim that there is debris on the track during crucial moments of a race and call for a restart. The problem was that cameras never caught this debris. It was a highly controversial practice that lost its necessity when stage breaks came into effect.

In a recent conversation with Dale Earnhardt Jr. on his podcast, Casey Mears listed the races in which such questionable cautions ended his chances of victory. But he also expressed an understanding that the promotion did not do it to ensure that a driver other than him reached victory lane. It was done merely to make things more exciting.

He said, “I don’t think that they did that in a way of, you know, we need this other guy to win the race. It was purely an opportunity to make the racing more exciting, and I gotta say, from a fan’s perspective, to get like a green-white-checker or a late race run… I mean, it was exciting, right?”

He continued to acknowledge that it wasn’t wrong, but it just didn’t work out in his favor at times. One of the most shining examples of the ill effects of debris cautions is the 2015 Auto Club 400 that was held in Fontana. Five debris cautions were thrown, and none of them were shown on TV.

The driver who was affected by the forced interventions was Kurt Busch. He lost every advantage he had from leading 65 laps and succumbed to defeat against Brad Keselowski.

Tony Stewart faced similar damage to his result back in 2007 against Jeff Gordon. Interestingly, he was fined $100,000 for criticizing the promotion in the aftermath.

He’d said, “I can’t understand how long the fans are going to let NASCAR treat them like they’re stupid before the fans finally turn on NASCAR. It’s like playing God. They can almost dictate the race instead of the drivers doing it.” The problem is largely solved now. NASCAR has made it legal to stop and reset races under the name of stage breaks.