DOVER, Del. (AP) – The mad dash back to the flagstand under caution is just a NASCAR memory after more than a half-century, and Rusty Wallace is ecstatic about that.

NASCAR put into effect this weekend the no-passing rule for its top three series. The Winston Cup cars will use it for the first time Sunday in the MBNA 400 at Dover International Speedway.

“I had hoped for a long time they were going to do this, and they’ve finally done it,” said Wallace, the 1989 series champion. “Sometimes, it’s a calculated train wreck going on.

“It’s a battle of four or five cars trying to get their laps back. It’s very dangerous.”

The new rule was adopted Thursday, four days after Dale Jarrett’s wrecked Ford sat precariously in the middle of the track as other cars raced by to hold or gain positions at New Hampshire.

“That wasn’t simply because of last week’s deal,” Jarrett said. “This was something that’s been happening for the last few years.”

Jimmie Johnson agreed, and lauded NASCAR for the change.

“It’s nice to see the steps taken to ensure safety on the track,” he Johnson said. “I think we were all scared for DJ last week.”

Winston Cup director John Darby said NASCAR had been considering the no-pass rule for more than a year.

“The situation last week a New Hampshire was probably one of the largest reasons we knew we had to react,” he said.

Now, with the wave of yellow flag, drivers must slow immediately and line up single file behind the leader. Those who improve their positions will, as a minimum penalty, be sent to the end of the longest line on a double-file restart.

Johnson expected lapped cars to race harder at times to get ahead of the leader in case a caution came out. NASCAR addressed that problem by ruling that the highest-scored car not on the lead lap will automatically be put there before green-flag racing resumes.

“For 53 or 54 years of competition in Winston Cup racing, one of the elements they found useful was the ability to gain lap back once the caution was displayed,” Darby said.

With yellow-flag racing now outlawed, the sanctioning body decided to reward a competitor who might be fast enough to get the lap back but would be denied the opportunity under the new rule.

The rule does not limit the reward to a car only one lap down, however.

“If he had all the rabbits feet in his pocket and all the horseshoes lined up, he could get a lap back on three consecutive cautions and ultimately get back on the lead lap,” Darby said.

He called the rule, which debuted Saturday in the Busch series event, a “work in progress” that could be changed should NASCAR encounter unexpected problems with it. One of those might be the accurate placement of cars when the field is frozen.

Darby conceded that could prove difficult.

“We don’t have a truckload of new whiz kid gadgets that are going to do that for us,” he said.

Race director David Hoots said NASCAR will attempt to solve the problem by adding to its scoring staff.

“It’s going to add some more elements that we’ll have to judge during the event,” he said.

NASCAR also modified the pit-road procedure, this after Jeff Gordon’s car spun and hit three members of teammate Johnson’s crew last week in New Hampshire. Now, all cars must enter pit road in single file and passing will be permitted only on the right.

Violations under caution will result in placement at the end of the longest line. Under green, the penalty would be an additional pass through under pit-road speed.

Mark Martin took a wait-and-see approach on the no-passing rule, but was totally behind the pit-road regulation.

“There won’t be any backlash or drawbacks to that,” he said.

The no-passing rule ends the indecision drivers faced when a caution flag came out.

“When you’re forced to make decisions, you’re going to make a selfish one,” Johnson explained. “In an instance where you’ve got a car crashed on the race track and everybody’s looking out for themselves trying to get a lap back it’s not a very safe environment.”

AP-ES-09-20-03 1633EDT