Saturday night saw the Xfinity Series race 300 miles at Kansas Lottery 300.  10 cautions and a lot of bent composite bodywork resulted in a somewhat scattered finishing order.

While the big 'ol crash for Anthony Alfredo is just part of what caused the somewhat strange result (only Alfredo and Riley Herbst dropped out because of it), it's a good place to start.  At the time, there had just been two quick yellows and the booth pointed out that everyone was getting impatient.

Alfredo had just been hit in the door during the previous incident and was not pleased about that (although he did like his car).  The booth pretty much nailed what happened here.  Justin Haley just got caught napping on the restart, leading everyone behind him to try to get past.  Justin Allgaier ended up stuck on the apron and tried to suddenly rejoin, which led to the wreck.

As we know, Alfredo ended up stuck upside down.  Today, the protocol for this is far different from when Ken Schrader rolled his car at Sonoma in 1999.  Back then, Schrader unbuckled, clambered out (with some likely unwanted help from a course marshal), then ran back to pit road where he was immediately interviewed by John Kernan.

That isn't going to fly now.  Rick Allen described the work necessary to get Alfredo's car flipped back so that he could get out safely.  This is all practiced a bunch.  Still wouldn't want to be in there, but it's designed to be as gentle as possible for the driver.

In this case, the booth knew from radio communications that Alfredo was ok before he got out of the car.  Given that the car was upside down at the time, I don't know how Alfredo was able to communicate with his crew, but that's another question for another day.  NBCSN chose to wait until Alfredo was out of the car before showing any replays.  This was mainly to make sure that he was ok, but to also explain the procedure to right the car.

Afterwards, there were some fans on social media that wanted NASCAR to institute a yellow line rule for intermediate tracks similar to what they have at Daytona and Talladega.  This wasn't a normal situation, although the fact that these playoffs are here don't help.  For what it's worth, when INDYCAR raced at places like Kansas, they did have such a rule.  I don't expect NASCAR to do anything of the sort here.

Racing-wise, this was a butt kicking for Chase Briscoe.  He led almost 80 percent of the race and by the end, literally no one could touch him.  That said, there was still a decent amount of racing for position on the broadcast.

The playoffs have never done anything for me as a race fan.  They just drive me nuts.  I don't believe that they have a positive effect on the sport.  Broadcast-wise (Sunday being the chief example), it severely limits who can get exposure.  That hurts anyone that is trying to sell that to a sponsor.  Activation is much harder now since doing that at the track is effectively out until the middle of next year at the earliest

In regards to the kicking of butt, perhaps it wouldn't have been so much of a whooping had Noah Gragson and Austin Cindric not gotten into a bashing match on lap 16.  The bashing match ended Gragson's day and put Cindric laps down.  This was entirely consistent with what was said leading into the race.  Shenanigans tend to go down in the Kansas Lottery 300.  This race last year saw Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe get caught up in a wreck with a lapped Garrett Smithley.  Austin Cindric was caught up in a wreck, while Noah Gragson in a separate incident.  2018 saw three playoff contenders eliminated in a first-lap crash.

Since the race ran long by nearly a half-hour, there was very little post-race coverage.  Viewers only got an interview with Chase Briscoe and a look at the points before NBCSN left Kansas.  I understand why that happened, but there were a number of interesting stories at the end of the race.  Ryan Sieg was on fresh tires and finished third.  Austin Hill finished in a career-best fifth, while Josh Williams was sixth.

NBC Sports has additional interviews with Sieg, Hill, Daniel Hemric and Justin Haley on their website.  Just go to the NASCAR Video page and click the load more button at the bottom of the screen to reach them.

Overall, this was a long race by Kansas Xfinity standards (average speed-wise, there are four slower races than this one), but there was a decent amount of action.  There was a lot of focus on the playoff contenders and they weren't really fighting each other all that much Saturday night because of the on-track incidents.  I wish the first one never happened so you would have had a more exciting race at the front of the field.