Days Of Blunder

Sounds perfectly logical to us: You're in a NASCAR race, you're not doing so hot, so you break off a piece of your car and throw it on the track so they'll put out the caution flag. Yet, Robbie Gordon could be in trouble for doing this — we just don't understand racing — at the Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday.

NASCAR called for a caution about 35 laps from the finish of Sunday's race because a piece of roll bar padding was on the track. The timing of the caution severely hurt Jeff Burton, who was a lap down because of an earlier incident and needed the field to run through a final round of green-flag cautions to catch up.

Oh, we see: a piece of padding; the most dangerous object known to man. They scrub space shuttle launches because of that, right? But if it were us and we were lagging the field, we'd be tossing items overboard like we were trying to get our balloon over some power lines. Other reasons, by the way, that a track will throw out the caution flag:

• Deer on roadway.

• This happens to be going on.

• Wind blows off Letterman's toupee.

• Insert Ricky Bobby reference here.

• It's Nov. 7, and your state is about to go blue.

NASCAR Investigating Gordon Over Debris [MSNBC]