NASCAR Scoring Still an Inexact Science

NASCAR, like every other sport, is still a game governed and officiated by people. Yeah, there are certain tools used by NASCAR officials to make officiating the game easier like computer scoring loops and video replays, but its still up to the race director. Any time people are involved in judging anything, mistakes are bound to happen. In recent weeks, we’ve seen NASCAR have to go to video to call one race, and also apologize twice for scoring errors made late in races.

During the Cup race at Michigan, Brian Vickers was mistakenly placed behind Mark Martin’s #8 car following a late caution. In actuality, Vickers had passed Martin two laps previous under green. We saw a similar situation late in Friday’s Nationwide Series race at Daytona. Coming to take the green for the green-white-checkered finish, NASCAR put Carl Edwards behind Clint Bowyer’s machine, when again, Edwards was actually ahead of Bowyer at the time of caution (see Nationwide Series Director Joe Balash’s explanation here). NASCAR later admitted their calls were wrong in both cases.

I’ve had a few very pointed emails in regards to these situations, and while I’m certainly not defending NASCAR in any way, I think its important to point out that officials are people just like everyone else.  The NFL went to video replay a few years ago to help alleviate some of the errors made by officials in calling the game, and while it has helped, it certainly wasn’t a cure-all solution.  NFL referees have arguably still messed up some calls even after lengthy reviews.  NASCAR is in a very similar situation.  They have instituted scoring loops and video replays to help correct past scoring issues, but when calls are being made in real time, its difficult to be perfect all the time.

I definitely don’t think there is a problem all of a sudden with NASCAR that is causing these issues.  These are isolated incidents that just happened to have taken place within a short amount of time of each other.  But with that being said, I certainly understand why drivers, crews, and fans are and would be angry about these cases.  We all work too hard to get our teams in a position to compete for the win, only to have our chances dashed by a bad officiating call.  It is in no way fair, but sometimes it happens.

Bad officiating and screwed up calls are an unfortunate part of competitions judged or officiated by humans.  If you have ever competed in any level of sports, you have no doubt been affected by such a call.  But until super computers are used to make the calls, its something we must learn to deal with.  I think calling officials biased towards certain teams or spending hours coming up with conspiracy theories is only a waste of time.  We all will be angry about being screwed over, but what’s done is done, and there is always next weekend.

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