The convergence of several unusual incidents during Sunday's Goody's 500 at Martinsville Speedway, produced a record 29-lap and nearly 20-minute delay – one NASCAR officials vowed not to let repeat in the future. At the end of an unusually long green-flag run and in the middle of green-flag pit stops, Carl Edwards' #19 Toyota blew a tire on Lap 356 of 500 which immediately put the race under caution. Many teams had not yet completed their stops when the caution was displayed and several teams were caught on pit road, a phenomena which typically causes scoring headaches for NASCAR. In addition, the race leader at the time of the caution, A.J. Allmendinger ran out of fuel and was forced to pit, while Jimmie Johnson – one of the cars still on the lead lap – had a fuel pickup problem and accidentally hit his engine kill switch, which briefly cut off his engine. The individual problems kept delaying the restart, as some drivers took it upon themselves to pull up along other cars – a practice to indicate to NASCAR they were questioning their position in the lineup.
"Today's situation was very unique and we were in the middle of green-flag pit stops," said Sprint Cup Series director Richard Buck. "That presents one set of issues and then as we got the lineup ready we had the leader run out of fuel, so we had to start over. We understand the stakes of the Chase – they are extremely high. Our job is to get it right. We then had another dynamic with (a large group) of wave-arounds. We took our time to make sure we got it right. It took a while but we felt very confident we got it right." Buck said NASCAR would consider a stopping the race (a red flag) but the problem Sunday was the circumstances kept changing. "We felt we were headed to a quick resolution and then we were presented with completely different circumstances and we were focused on making sure we got it right." Motorsport