There was no good reason to wait until 7:20 p.m. Then again, an earlier start time might have helped that, too. They also likely would have said about eight fewer cautions would have been better, and viewers watching at home on television no doubt would have enjoyed being able to go to bed 30-45 minutes earlier. “I think if you were to ask most race fans here (Saturday night) if they enjoyed four-and-a-half hours of racing action, I think they’d say yes.” “I look at it as, ‘Were the fans entertained?’ When I looked down (from the control tower) at Lap 10 and toward the end of the race, they were on their feet,” he said. Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer, said in a news conference immediately after the race that he was pleased with the racing action on the track and defended the length of the race. That’s about eight too many and led to a race that was ridiculously long (just shy of four-and-a-half hours). There were a record 18 cautions in the Bojangles' Southern 500 at Darlington that eventually was won by Carl Edwards. Too many cautions make for long night in Darlington It led to the loss of what one source told Bleacher Report was upward of $15 million annually on the final two years of a NAPA sponsorship contract, which led to a first round of layoffs and organizational reduction from three competitive cars to two mediocre ones. NASCAR came down hard on the organization and rightly so, removing Truex from the Chase field and levying a $300,000 fine. It was foolish, and MWR ended up paying a heavy price for its tomfoolery. One MWR driver, Clint Bowyer, ahem, “allegedly” spun on purpose and a second MWR driver, Brian Vickers, complied with inexplicable team orders to pit with three laps left in the race in a thinly veiled attempt to help a third MWR driver, Martin Truex Jr., gain entry into what was then a 12-driver Chase for the Sprint Cup field.
![michael waltrip girlfriend kassi hansen michael waltrip girlfriend kassi hansen](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZTYxYmY4MTYtM2ViYy00MjE1LTg2NjYtNTUzMGUzYjc3MGYyXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTkzNjEwMjI@._V1_UY1200_CR135,0,630,1200_AL_.jpg)
![michael waltrip girlfriend kassi hansen michael waltrip girlfriend kassi hansen](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CioJ0c7WsAAD5A2.jpg)
The beginning of the end, as it were, for MWR, goes back to Richmond and the ill-fated night of Sept. Some reportedly will be shown the door as early as Nov. 1 with the state of North Carolina that it intends to permanently lay off 217 employees from its race shop located in Cornelius, North Carolina, on the outskirts of Charlotte. "From a business decision, it just made sense to not go forward with that organization because it just wasn't commercially viable." "It's a great sport, but a very difficult business model," added Kauffman, who first propped up a financially strapped MWR in October 2007, only 10 months into its first year of operation.