Imagine this: You’re 0 for 117 in a career spanning over 15 years. About to call it quits at age 33 and ready for what is rumored to be a full-time TV broadcasting career. Time is running out, and you’re leading by a clear margin. All that needs to happen is that you keep the car on the racetrack and stay out of trouble.

But this is modern-day NASCAR. The precedent that has been set in this sport over the last two decades has one more very important caveat that a driver needs to reach in order to find victory lane; the leading driver needs a lot of luck in hoping that the rest of the field keeps it together on the penultimate lap. In essence, Parker Kligerman learned the most brutal way possible that the only guarantee that a NASCAR driver will win a race he worked so hard to accomplish actually comes down to perfect on-track conditions when he approaches and passes the line to take the white flag. Instead, Kligerman gets ruffled up by Sam Mayer in overtime and loses arguably the best race of his entire Xfinity Series career. The 0 in wins dreadfully remains, with only a handful of races remaining in Kligerman’s career.

As a fan, I have to ask myself: Was all of this commotion really worth achieving the “entertaining green flag finish NASCAR promises to guarantee their fans?”

Now I get it; rules are rules. NASCAR has to play fair to all competitors alike. The storylines may not be as enjoyable, but all 40 drivers must be treated equally. The problem I, the NASCAR fan of over 20 years, have is that we shouldn’t be led on to have another inconsistent call come at the expense of the competitors. Between Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at the Charlotte Roval and July’s Brickyard 400, NASCAR would have equally been better off calling the caution immediately for their respective penultimate lap crashes. Sure, Kyle Larson’s storybook win might have been at stake with the overtime. Still, by not calling a caution for Ryan Preece’s car sitting stranded on the racetrack for 30 seconds, NASCAR created their own precedent with what should be expected should the inconvenient situation of a crash with two laps to go happens. On Saturday, fans expected the same outcome as they saw at Indianapolis.

Parker Kligerman did everything he and all the other drivers signed up to do: compete at his mightiest and be the best driver on the track for all 67 laps. Watching the win slip away from the 34-year-old journeyman driver was hard to see.

My question for NASCAR is: Why keep this going? Like the NASCAR Playoffs format, there is way too much going on outside the driver’s and team’s hands, no matter how high the stakes are.

Most of us can agree the storybooks from yesterday would have been better off telling the world about Parker Kligerman’s breakthrough Xfinity Series win in the waning races of his career. Instead, those pages were scrapped because something that happened completely out of his hands. I believe NASCAR should place greater emphasis on the meritocracy of its competitors. To me, yesterday’s overtime finish interfered with the team that deserved victory the most. Sam Mayer did what he needed to do to win and deserves credit for his late-race drive, but I argue that the final restart was not a good look for the sport.

The first 66 laps should have to matter just as much as the 67th lap, regardless of what happened to Leland Honeyman Jr’s car on lap 66. And if overtime is the end-all-be-all for NASCAR, they need to keep it fair and square, no matter the inconvenience.

This offseason, NASCAR really needs to reassess its officiating calls and reconsider whether overtime is even worth having.

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