Sorenson faces possible sanctions
By Bob Pockrass
Sunday, April 09, 2006
FORT WORTH, Texas - Reed Sorenson faces a possible points penalty for intentionally bringing out a caution in the O'Reilly 300 Busch Series race Saturday at Texas Motor Speedway.
NASCAR threw the caution for a piece of roll bar padding from Sorenson's car that was on the track and sent Sorenson to the end of the longest line at the time, a penalty of about five positions.
"There was a penalty given on the race track," Busch Series Director Joe Balash said after the race. "Now with everything like that, we will go back to the office early next week and take a good look at it."
Balash said he has a pretty good idea of what happened and when asked if it was intentional, he said, "You'd have to watch the replay."
The replay shows a piece of foam coming from the driver's side window out on to the track. Sorenson said after the race he wasn't sure how the foam got out of his car.
"I guess it just melted off, I don't know," Sorenson said.
Sorenson, who finished 13th (he was running 12th at the time of the penalty) and sits 17th in points, said he was not worried about a points penalty.
"I think we'll be all right," Sorenson said. "I'm worried about running better."
The situation was the second time in seven races this season where a caution came out during a Busch Series race because a driver allegedly threw something out of his car onto the track. At California, a driver threw a glove out onto the track, but NASCAR could never determine whose glove it was.
"It's not a happy thing [for us]," Balash said about a driver bringing out the caution. "Unfortunately with the first one that happened, we didn't have any video that would help us find out who threw that glove out.
"This one, there's a very clear video shot of the piece of debris leaving that car."
Balash said he did not believe NASCAR would eject Sorenson from Texas for the rest of the weekend and keep him out of the Nextel Cup race Sunday.
"To my knowledge, there are no issues that would affect his ability to drive in [the Cup] event," Balash said.
