“Cautions breed cautions” is hereby offically changed to “Commercial breed cautions.”
I was motivated by Elliott Sadler’s yellow-flag-inducing spin during the lap 108 commercial break of Saturday’s “Chevy Rock-n-Roll 400” at Richmond International Raceway on TNT. Why do all the yellows happen during a commercial? Turns out, almost half of the cautions for this race occured during a commercial break. My undocumented memory tells me that’s a conservative number compared to many races.
Is it just a fluke?
I don’t think so. I’m not a TV insider, but it seems that the network has a policy of running commercials whenever the race stays green for a pre-determined number of laps.
“We’re gonna reap the motherlode on this race. Every 25 laps, were doing 5 commercials, baby!” – a TNT highup muckitymuck
How many times do we need to be reminded that WANTED is a TNT original series, playing Sunday at 10/9c?”