7 Rules NASCAR Needs to Rethink — and What They Should Do Instead From stage cautions to overtime finishes, here are seven practical solutions to NASCAR rules that the sanctioning body can reconsider.

You’re watching an action-packed race, full of passes and some heavy-hitters battling it out for the lead, and in the blink of an eye, the race’s outcome is already decided, not by what happens on the track, but by a rule that feels outdated and downright confusing. But is NASCAR really that complicated?

The answer to that is probably just that the fans want to see side-by-side racing, good race strategies, and the best driver to win on the track. But that raises an important question: if the rulebook is supposed to ensure fairness, why do so many fans feel it gets in the way?

To answer that, we dug into the fan perspective and took a closer look at some of the most debated regulations. And, to begin with, here are NASCAR’s seven most controversial rules of all time.

1) The Double Yello