Gluck: Cautions lead to wild, unpredictable finish at Fontana

FONTANA, Calif. — The NCAA may have trademarked March Madness, but college basketball doesn't have a monopoly on crazy sports events this month.

Consider Sunday's NASCAR race at Auto Club Speedway.

Somehow, Brad Keselowski ended up in victory lane. Don't ask him how, because he doesn't know. But Keselowski won amidst the chaos of Fontana's wild restarts and a flurry of debris cautions, which generated madness in both the chaotic sense and the anger-inducing sense for some drivers.

"When you win today, you temper that with the knowledge you're going to lose one like this," said Keselowski, who lined up 18th heading into the first overtime green-white-checkered finish. "You're going to have a dominant car one day, and there's going to come a sequence of fluke events that's going to cost you a win.

"You're going to look around and go, 'How did I lose?' And you're going to be really angry."

Keselowski was anything but angry Sunday — it was his first victory of the season and first at the worn 2-mile oval — but his competitors probably didn't feel very happy on their long flights back to North Carolina.

In the blink of an eye, the Auto Club 400 went from a pending Matt Kenseth victory to a possible Kevin Harvick win to a surefire Kurt Busch celebration.

But then none of them won.

The entire face of the race was changed by a series of three debris cautions in the final 23 laps, plus one non-call at the finish.

The first ruined Kenseth's day. He was leading the race and came in for a pit stop with the rest of the front-runners, then broke an axle and finished 31st.

"We got ourselves in a position really nicely and there's a debris caution and you can't find debris anywhere," Kenseth said. "I didn't see any (debris) that caution or the next one, so that's always disappointing."

That put Harvick up front, but Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Busch got past him on the restart. Busch, who missed the first three races of the season while suspended for his involvement in an alleged domestic assault (he was not charged), was then a lap-and-a-half from victory when NASCAR called for another debris caution that was not shown on TV.

"WWE," Busch said on the team radio.

Still, it seemed like it would all work out for Busch. He was first off pit road with two tires, and the No. 41 car shot out front on the restart and circled the track out front in search of the white flag.

But perhaps because the field had been bunched up again with varying strategies — including Keselowski's four-tire call — there was contact back in the pack and a piece of Kyle Larson's car flew off, which caused another caution.

"Son of a gun," Busch said.

This time, Busch's strategy was thwarted. Keselowski's two additional fresh tires were more valuable than gold, particularly on NASCAR's oldest, tire-chewing asphalt.

There was nothing Busch could do. Keselowski caught him and passed him on the last lap — thanks in part to NASCAR's reluctance to call a caution despite Greg Biffle's wreck at the start/finish line.

"I don't know why the caution didn't come out when they're wrecking on the front straightaway, but whatever," Busch crew chief Tony Gibson said.

Sprint Cup Series director Richard Buck said there were multiple reports of a piece of metal in the racing groove — which in the case of Fontana is the entire track. A caution was called, but a car hit the debris before it could be picked up; it was not immediately located after the race.

As for not calling a caution on Biffle's crash, officials quickly determined Biffle would be able to get his car restarted and out of the way before the leaders came back around for the finish (and he did).

Asked if NASCAR takes into account how much impact one debris caution can have in triggering a series of events, Buck shook his head.

"We don't have any favorites; we try to keep every emotion out of it," Buck said. "Safety is No. 1. ... We feel very, very confident about our actions."

As tempting as it is for some fans to believe, conspiracy is quite unlikely. But NASCAR's own March Madness? On Sunday, there was no doubt.

Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck

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