NASCAR did the right thing.

Too bad it was a day late and a lot of dollars short for Regan Smith.

--(Cont'd From Front Page)-- Smith crossed the finish line first at the end of Sunday’s AMP Energy 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, but after entering the tri-oval on the final lap, he made his pass for the lead below the yellow line that separates the racing surface from the apron at the 2.66-mile track.

That move allowed the Sprint Cup rookie to blow by Tony Stewart in the final 100 yards. Improving your position by passing below the yellow line, however, is forbidden at Talladega and Daytona, NASCAR racing’s two restrictor-plate superspeedways.

Stewart freely admitted after the race that he had blocked the bottom groove. Smith contends that Stewart forced him below the yellow line. NASCAR penalized Smith for the violation, dropping him to 18th, the last position on the lead lap.

There are two ways Smith could have won the race, and Smith could make a convincing argument for both. First, NASCAR could have ruled that Stewart forced Smith beneath the yellow line, and that Smith steered his Chevrolet to the apron to avoid contact and a major wreck.

Under that scenario, NASCAR would have been forced to penalize Stewart, and Smith would have been declared the winner. But the sanctioning body saw it the other way.

Second, NASCAR could have adhered to its own precedent. The notion that anything goes on the final lap of a plate race isn’t just popular myth. NASCAR invoked its own interpretation of that unwritten rule in February 2007, when Johnny Benson passed Travis Kvapil in the final 200 yards -- below the yellow line -- for second place in a Craftsman Truck Series race at Daytona.

That was OK, because, as Owen Kearns, NASCAR’s senior manager of communications for the truck series told The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle at the time, “If you can see the checkered flag on the last lap, anything goes.”

In a blog written Feb. 20, 2007, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer’s David Poole quoted NASCAR managing director of communications Ramsey Poston from a Sirius Satellite Radio interview the Monday after the truck race, noting that Poston said the yellow-line rule contains an important caveat.

“When the drivers can see the checkered flag, you can get all you can get,” Poston said.

Smith insisted he could see the flag stand from the tri-oval, where he dipped below the yellow line. It’s hard to argue that point. The press box at Talladega sits at the approximate center of the trioval, and from that vantage point, the flag stand is clearly visible.

Whether it’s the flag itself, or the flag man or the flag stand the driver is supposed to see is a matter for debate, but drivers had adopted a seemingly reasonable interpretation -- that all bets were off coming to the stripe on the final lap of a superspeedway race.

“As late as he made the move, it appeared to me that he did what he was supposed to,” said ninth-place finisher Jimmie Johnson.

In his postrace explanation of Sunday’s penalty, however, NASCAR vice president of corporate communications Jim Hunter seemed to suggest the rule was absolute.

“You cannot improve your position any time you go below the yellow line,” Hunter said “In our judgment, he (Smith) improved his position, and the penalty for that is a pass-through, so he was moved back to the tail end of the longest line, or 18th position.”

To Smith, however, whether he could see a quarter of a mile ahead is not even the primary point.

“I could see the flag stand,” Smith said in a telephone interview Monday morning with Sporting News. “I don’t know the whole deal with that rule, but I do know that if you get forced down there, they will do what they think is right -- and I thought I got forced down there. It was that or wreck.

“I’m not somebody that’s ever raced dirty, and I’m not somebody that’s out there trying to wreck people. The flip side of that is that if I had tried to turn him (Stewart), then potentially I could have gotten hit from the back by whoever was behind me. ... I could have spun myself, too, and finished 18th anyway.”

After the race, NASCAR officials suggested to Smith that he had another option, backing out of the throttle -- something that would have run counter to every instinct in a racecar driver’s psyche.

“They did say something along those lines, and I said, ‘You guys are nuts. Why would I back out coming to the start/finish line when I think I can win?’ ” Smith said “If I’d have hit the brakes right there and purposely finished second, holy cow, I might as well just quit racing right now.”

Going forward, the only judgment call NASCAR will have to make is who did what, because, on Monday afternoon, NASCAR president Mike Helton issued a statement clarifying the yellow-line rule. Henceforth, there will be no passing beneath the yellow line on any lap, including the last one.

“The gray area has been removed,” said Poston, who added that, even if a driver is forced below the yellow line, he is not allowed to improve his position.

Too bad the rule and its interpretations weren’t clear to Smith at the time. Had he backed out and finished second (or had NASCAR placed him second), he would have gained nine points in the Raybestos Rookie of the Year standings, a bonanza that would have gone a long way toward locking up that important title.

Though the less-than-strict interpretation of the yellow-line rule in February 2007 may have been intended to give drivers latitude on the track, NASCAR should have learned a lesson from Sunday’s race.

If a rule is violated, enforce it. Don’t interpret it and muddy the waters.

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