During a recent episode of his podcast show, Dale Earnhardt Jr. spoke on the subject of ‘phantom yellows’ which were a big talking point in NASCAR during the time he was a driver. Earnhardt brought that up in the light of the recent race at COTA claiming that a yellow flag shouldn’t be thrown if there’s no reason to.
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The Hall of Famer then pointed to the fact that up until 2000, in an average NASCAR race, there would be one and a half debris caution. But from 2000 to 2004 until the concept of stage cautions was introduced, that number jumped to 2 per race.
“I mean I was talking about this in my driving career in the 2000s and the 2010s about these debris yellows and they were horses**t. They would have a caution and the network wouldn’t even be able to show you anything on the racetrack because it didn’t exist. Phantom yellows. They were real,” Earnhardt explained.
“They weren’t really yellows but the phantom yellows did exist because that was a chunk of time from about 15 years where the yellow flags for debris just inexplicably jumped by 2 per race from a 30-year history. And then as soon as stage cautions came back, that number of the debris yellow reset back to the norm.”
Just like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart also wasn’t a fan of ‘phantom yellows’
After a race in Phoenix which he lost to Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart refused to do his media duties. Why? Because he didn’t want to bash NASCAR for their ‘phantom yellows.’
However, Stewart did end up bashing NASCAR afterward for the same, claiming what they were doing was like “playing God,” that they were dictating the race instead of the drivers. “I guess NASCAR thinks ‘Hey, wrestling worked, and it was for the most part staged, so I guess it’s going to work in racing, too,'” he said as per Cape Cod Times.
“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.”
But the good part is, for the fans and for the drivers, this seems to be a matter of the past because now we seldom see NASCAR throwing ‘phantom yellows’.
