Last weekend at the Darlington Raceway, the Southern 500 concluded with Kyle Larson winning the race. With this, he booked his berth into the Round of 12 and will be relaxed in the next two races. Meanwhile, the other 15 NASCAR drivers will have to sweat it out for the next two races at Kansas and Bristol. However, it is worth mentioning that the Southern 500 experienced a few hold-ups that triggered a red flag.

Thankfully, it was nothing as dramatic as the previous weekend’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona. Instead, the stoppage fell into the weird category, and it did force the race to be halted. Red flags during a race are fairly normal and almost always because of a massive wreck or inclement weather. However, over the course of NASCAR history, red flags have been waved for bizarre reasons.

Grand Theft Auto: NASCAR

At the Talladega Superspeedway in 1986, one of the weirdest incidents took place. As it turned out, a fan wandered onto the track and decided to take the pace car for a joyride. Darren Charles Crowder only got as far as two laps before he was apprehended. In the end, Bobby Allison won the race, ahead of Dale Earnhardt and Buddy Baker.

Fine… I’ll do it myself

A year later at the Richmond Raceway, there was a wreck which Dale Earnhardt barely escaped. Unfortunately, the accident sprayed a lot of mud on his car’s windshield. Apparently, he was not willing to give up the track position just so that his team could clean the windshield. So he elected to take matters into his own hands, climb out of the window, sit on the door frame, and clean the mud off himself.

Attack of the giant orange

Back in 2004, Xfinity Series driver Todd Szegedy got the shock of his life. As he started his lap, he almost got run over by a 20-foot inflatable orange. He confessed afterward, “I used to like orange juice, now it almost killed me. It would have been neat if it would have hooked onto my car.”

Impromptu autograph session in the middle of a race

Back in 2007, there was a big wreck at Watkins Glen, that brought out a red flag. Naturally, all of the cars had to stop on the start-finish straight. In light of that, one fan decided to pull off a gutsy move while the cars were waiting for the race to resume. One of the waiting drivers was Matt Kenseth, who got a bit of a surprise. This was because one fan hopped over the fence and ran over to his car to ask for an autograph. Kenseth declined because it was against the rules, so the fan walked away.

Lights out and away we go

This race, during the 2008 season, witnessed a strange technical malfunction. Under some circumstances, lights would fail briefly. However, on this occasion, the issue was with the caution lights, but not what people actually thought it was. Apparently, one of the caution lights actually broke off from its mount and fell onto the track. Of course, the caution flag had to be waved to retrieve the light before it did any damage.

Caution light failure again

During the 2010 Cup Series race at Las Vegas, there was another light failure. Unlike the Auto Club shenanigans, this was a failure with the caution light itself, which malfunctioned. The Cup drivers had just attempted a restart when barely a lap later, the caution light lit up again for no reason.

Driving in the dark

This is really becoming a common theme, where technical glitches occur unexpectedly. Thankfully, this took place during a practice session and not during the race. To make matters even better, there was no carnage, even though the cars were still running on the track.

Sprinkling chaos at Richmond

Now, malfunctioning lights are one thing, but a different problem arose at Richmond in 2013. The race suddenly went into a caution period, owing to a wet surface. All this was in spite of the fact that there was not a single rain cloud in the sky. Instead, the moisture came from the Richmond Raceway’s sprinklers that were wetting the grass in the infield. Of course, there was concern about the water leaking onto the track and potentially causing chaos.

Where there is smoke, there is fire

Back in 2013 at the Kansas Speedway, the caution flag was urgently waved during the race. This was because there was a lot of smoke billowing from the stands, where some bushes were on fire. Thankfully, no spectator was in any danger from the flames, but the smoke could have potentially been an issue.

Notes on a car, that’s a new one

This one was just purely down to a brain fade. At the Bristol Motor Speedway, crew chief Richard ‘Slugger’ Labbe left his notebook on Paul Menard’s #27 car. Menard started the practice session with the notebook lodged in his rear bumper. Eventually, it slipped loose, and nearly every page was ripped out in a confetti shower. Poor old Matt Kenseth even found a couple of pages stuck to his car bumper.

Caution flag by accident

This incident was a product of stupidity on the part of the officials. According to reports, one of the flag people accidentally leaned on the manual override switch for the caution lights. It is also worth mentioning that no one spotted this mistake until much later.

Jamie McMurray hits the track, literally

This incident occurred at the Dover International Speedway during the Cup race. Sometime during the race, a small piece of concrete got dislodged by one of the cars. Unfortunately, poor old Jamie McMurray became the unexpected victim, as his car smashed into the debris and caused damage.

These NASCAR fans are crazy

This incident was nothing but the byproduct of idiocy from a drunk fan, and a lapse in security. The mayhem occurred at the Richmond Raceway and the fan was later caught and arrested. According to reports, he was sentenced to a year in jail with all but one month suspended. He was also ordered to pay a $100 fine on the counts of being drunk in public and disorderly conduct.

Ambulances are supposed to help people, right?

This incident was the result of a bit of a mess at Richmond in 2017. Sometime in the middle of the race, an ambulance was scrambled onto the track. Unfortunately, a bout of miscommunication meant that it was parked right by the entry to pit road. As a result, several cars found it difficult to squeeze past, and Matt Kenseth ended up damaging his car in the bottleneck.

Pitch black at the Phoenix Raceway

Once again, we’re back to the technical issues with the race track. This time, the victim happened to be the NASCAR Truck Series during the 2018 race. The good news was that the sudden power failure did not create any pandemonium, and it was in the closing laps of the race. Not that it stopped Erik Jones from winning the Truck Series race.

Jet dryer catches on fire

No, we’re not talking about that infamous 2012 Daytona 500 where Juan Pablo Montoya crashed into a jet dryer. This was another incident, this time in Kansas in 2019, where flames erupted from the jet dryer. According to some reports, it was a relatively small fire and nobody was harmed in the process.

Dillon Bassett goes headfirst into a sweeper truck

Much like the ambulance incident, this was also a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. At the Iowa Speedway, there was an incident that brought out a caution, as well as other recovery and clean-up vehicles. Unfortunately, one sweeper truck was parked close to the pit road entry, and poor old Dillon Bassett was unsighted before crashing into it.

What a rip-off!

During the NASCAR Cup race at Darlington, there were some strange scenes as Denny Hamlin found out the hard way. Sometime in the middle of the race, the cars ran so close to the walls that the sponsor signage got ripped off. A fairly large chunk even got lodged in Hamlin’s front grille.

Lights out at Gateway

During the NASCAR Truck Series race at World Wide Technology Raceway, there was a stoppage. This was because of a power outage at the track, and the red flag lasted for a while. As it turned out, there was a fire outside the race track and it knocked out the lights, timing, and scoring.

Half the track lit up at Darlington

Finally, during last weekend’s NASCAR Playoff race at Darlington, half the track was plunged in darkness. This was because there was a technical issue with the lights at Turns 3 and 4. Of course, this prompted a caution period so that the problem could be rectified.

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