LONG POND, Pa. – With NASCAR in the midst of a four-week stretch of tracks known for breeding a variety of pit strategies, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise when drivers and teams got a fuel-mileage race Sunday at Pocono Raceway.
But it seemed to catch many of them off guard. NASCAR, which has appeared trigger-happy sometimes with caution flags late in races, allowed this one to stay green for the final 63 laps – resulting in about a dozen drivers running their fuel tanks dry.
“In the (officiating) booth up there, they turned the clock back to 1973 and let that thing play out a little bit and let everybody run out of gas,” Dale Earnhardt Jr.