NASCAR drivers' hot topic: Lost ambulances

Brad Keselowski has never shied away from a question, and Wednesday during NASCAR Playoffs media day, the Team Penske driver offered a frank answer when asked whether he was concerned about ambulance response time.

"My expectations are very low already to begin with," Keselowski said with a laugh. "I'm not all that worried about it. Our thoughts are just make the car right, so you don't have to worry about it."

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Harvick revealed there were two incidents this season in which the ambulance got lost while transporting him to the infield care center. Matt Kenseth said the same thing happened to him during the Richmond spring race.

"I was driving around the infield for about five minutes with him. He was lost and couldn't find the care center. So thankfully I wasn't bleeding to death," Kenseth said. "Then the other one I think is after California or something like that. He drove so recklessly, it threw me right off the bench, and I almost hit my head in the ambulance."

While Jimmie Johnson said he had not had any of the same issues, he noted the driver's council had brought them up to NASCAR. He credited the sanctioning body with making a change to ensure it doesn't happen again. Johnson was also one of the drivers who said he would be in favor of a traveling medical crew, such as those used in the IndyCar Series.

Unfortunately for NASCAR, the ambulance wasn't the only thing that's had people talking as the most important part of the season looms.

The timing of cautions and how NASCAR officiates a race, particularly late in the going, have been called into question after Martin Truex Jr. criticized a Lap 398 caution at Richomnd for Derrike Cope scraping the wall. Truex did say NASCAR has been consistent in how it's called cautions through the year, but Saturday night was a departure from that.

"That's really what I wanted to talk to Steve [O'Donnell] about, was why did they throw the caution? From what I could see, there was no real reason. Somebody just jumped the gun on that one," Truex said. "Dale [Earnhardt] Jr.'s tweet this week about Carl Edwards, his championship going away last year [at Homestead] for a caution, it's hard not to think about that. If we're in that same situation at Homestead and that happens, what happened to us Saturday night, that would be really, really hard to take.

"They just need to make sure they're consistent and make the right call when the pressure's on. I mean, that's their job. That's what they have to do. If there's a real reason for the caution, then nobody can say anything about it. Yes, that should have been a caution. So just do the right thing and make the right call at the right time."

Consistency in calling cautions is what every driver seemed to agree on. Also recognizing that NASCAR is going to be in a tough spot regardless, no driver expressed concerns that Richmond-like snafus could happen again. But it's something on everyone's mind.

"I've talked to them for sure," Denny Hamlin said. "They deemed it just like what happens when a driver has a bad race – hey, they're moving on to the next race. Short of, like, an NBA ref tripping a player, then that player getting injured, I don't know how it relates.

"It was just bizarre to me. It's frustrating because there should be one constant in NASCAR, and that's how the races are called and officiated."