Joey Logano Calls Out NASCAR for Dangerous Inaction

Benefitting from that first-lap incident was Brent Crews, who started third, and went on to lead the first 17 laps. The 17-year-old eventually led a race-high 56 of the 70 laps and appeared in line for his first career NASCAR win with three to go until Toni Breidinger had an issue with her truck and brought out a caution. 

Surprisingly, it took officials 13 seconds from the time when the No. 5 truck was first shown on the broadcast stopped in a precarious position near the racing line before NASCAR officials put out the caution. Logano noticed the delay and candidly called it out.

“Guys, that's gonna bring out a caution,” Logano said. 

“Yes,” Harvick quickly agreed.

“That has to. That's in a very dangerous spot,” the Penske driver suggested as a pair of trucks zipped by very close to the wounded Tricon truck. “How they have not thrown a caution at this point is beyond me,” he said as the yellow simultaneously came out. “That is a very dangerous place to be sitting.” 

“Yeah, you couldn't sit in a worse spot on this racetrack,” Harvick said. 

The officiating indecision came five days after another delayed yellow at Kansas in the Cup Series race when NBC’s Leigh Diffey and Jeff Burton both expressed surprise at how long NASCAR officials waited to put out a caution following a Carson Hocevar spin with 10 laps remaining. It was 11 seconds from the time the No. 77 was shown spinning until the time of the caution.

Both of these incidents — albeit in different series — come on the heels of the sanctioning body parting ways with Cup Series race director Jusan Hamilton on Sept. 26.

While Bob Pockrass reported that the departure wasn’t performance related, fans couldn’t help but speculate considering Hamilton was in race control during the Duel qualifiers at Daytona back in February and called a caution a few hundred feet from the finish line, which awarded the win to Austin Cindric instead of Erik Jones, who crossed the finish line first.

In the Daytona 500 several days later, Hamilton didn’t call a caution on the final lap for a crash involving race leader Denny Hamlin.

After Daytona, Hamilton admitted fault in the Duel, and that NASCAR would try to race back to the finish line on the final lap when possible. A week later at Atlanta, a caution would be thrown for a crash on the final lap, awarding the win to Christopher Bell while he was in a three-wide battle for the win with Kyle Larson and Carson Hocevar.

Those were just the first few races of the season. There have been other questionable calls as well like Chicago and the violent Cody Ware crash into the tires and that very delayed caution. 

Add the two latest questionable caution calls to the list in a 2025 NASCAR season that's had officials in the headlines more than anyone wants to see. Fans and teams can only hope the officiating situation will be addressed before the green flag drops on the 2026 campaign.