Straight From the Helton's Mouth ...

NASCAR President Mike Helton appeared on Speed TV's Race Hub tonight and the first question out of the box had to do with the controversial debris caution at the end of Sunday's race -

NASCAR Race Hub: Can you clarify the circumstances behind the last caution (of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race from Michigan)?

Mike Helton:  "It was a debris caution. I’m not sure what beyond the circumstances of that you might be asking … and I heard a little bit of the chatter after the race was over with. The fact of the matter on a caution … it doesn’t matter if its lap 10 or lap 190 of 200, the first and foremost concern we have is for the safety of the drivers. Through the course of an event, we’ll get input – sometimes it comes from the drivers, sometimes it comes from the observers that we’ve got around the race track, sometimes it comes from one of the 18 or 20 cameras that we have access to through the control tower of the event. When someone, on a piece of debris, which is unique from an engine that blows up and drops oil, or an accident that is obvious to fans and to other drivers … when someone tells us about a piece of debris, more often than not, we can quantify whether it's there or it's not, and if it is there, we can quantify what it is, based on the things that I mentioned that we have access to. If there is any doubt, though, we are going to call a debris caution. If we see something and cannot tell what it is, we’re going to err on the side of safety. But there is always something there when we have a debris caution. A lot of times, we’re told there is debris on the race track, that we don’t throw it because we can’t find it anywhere."

To read the rest of Helton's interview, click here.