NASCAR Officials Under Fire For Waiting To Throw A Caution After Brutal Wreck By Cody Ware At The End Of Chicago Street Course Race
Somebody leave the control tower early to beat the crowd to Lou Malnati’s? NASCAR was in Chicago yesterday for the third (and possibly final) annual Fourth of July weekend race at the street course in the Windy City. And for the most part, it seemed to go much better than the previous two events. The past two years, the races have been impacted by weather, with the first trip to Chicago being hit by historic rainfall that put a damper […] The post NASCAR Officials Under Fire For Waiting To Throw A Caution After Brutal Wreck By Cody Ware At The End Of Chicago Street Course Race first appeared on Whiskey Riff.


Somebody leave the control tower early to beat the crowd to Lou Malnati’s?
NASCAR was in Chicago yesterday for the third (and possibly final) annual Fourth of July weekend race at the street course in the Windy City. And for the most part, it seemed to go much better than the previous two events.
The past two years, the races have been impacted by weather, with the first trip to Chicago being hit by historic rainfall that put a damper on the festivities and forced organizers to cancel the weekend’s concerts, while last year’s race was also rainy (but nothing like 2023).
Shane Van Gisbergen ended up leaving Chicago with a victory, his second at the street course after winning the inaugural race in 2023 in his first ever NASCAR Cup Series start, and his second win of the season after taking the checkered flag in Mexico City a couple weeks ago.
SVG dominated much of the race, and was clearly the car to beat all weekend. But despite the fact that he had a solid lead and was well on his way to victory, there was still some officiating controversy at the end of the race.
As the cars were coming to the white flag, Cody Ware suffered a brake failure on his #51 Arby’s car for Rick Ware Racing that sent him flying into the tire barrier in turn 6 of the track.
And if that video doesn’t do the impact justice, this one shows just how hard he impacted the tires, reportedly crashing at around 93 mph.
Just a massive, massive hit.
Ware was heard on the radio immediately after the crash saying “need help,” and it was clear that his car wasn’t going to be able to get out of the tire barrier on its own.
But despite the crash and obvious safety hazard to both Ware and the other cars on the track, NASCAR waited 34 seconds from the time of impact before throwing the caution flag, giving Van Gisbergen enough time to take the white flag and avoid having to reset the field for an overtime finish.
Fans speculated that NASCAR was aware of severe weather in the area, and held off on throwing the caution for so long because they didn’t want to have to red flag the race or impact the finish by forcing the cars down pit road to put on wet weather tires for a potential overtime finish. But NASCAR claims that wasn’t the case, explaining that they saw Ware in the tire barrier but didn’t see the hit, so they were giving it time to see if he could get his car moving on his own.
But fans weren’t buying it. NASCAR themselves had posted a video earlier in the weekend showing the setup they had in the control center for the race, and it showed they had a camera pointing directly at the spot where Ware had his wreck: