PASS has a rule book it chooses to ignore. It legislates on the fly, unable to simply draw lines in the sand which race teams are not allowed to cross. Want to line up where ever you please after earning the lucky dog award? Go ahead. Don't want to race back to the checkered flag? That's OK, we'll just do it again. Feel like jumping a restart when the win is on the line? Heck, that's OK, too.

PASS turns itself into a punchline over and over and over again. Every time you think the group is on the right path, they find a way to deliver another joke.

Central to what happened on Saturday at Thompson are two rules that were clearly and knowingly altered by PASS officials -- rules regularly reviewed in the pre-race drivers' meetings. First, when a yellow flag is exhibited on the race's final lap, competitors are to race to the checkered flag. Second, drivers are prohibited from "stealing" a win by jumping the final restart to gain position in a green-white-checker situation.

Rick Martin may have "celebrated" his in victory lane, under a ringing chorus of boos in the grandstands and verbal shots being fired from other race teams, but he wasn't officially declared the winner. Nor should he have been, plain and simple.

On the first of 2 green-white-checker attempts on Saturday, Martin led Derek Ramstrom and teammates Ben Rowe and Trevor Sanborn to the green flag. Martin made contact with Ramstrom, who bounced off the turn 4 wall, but the field remained in motion and completed lap 74. All of the cars running on the track passed under the white flag before Gary Bellefleur hit the turn 1 wall extremely hard on lap 75.

As the caution came out, several cars, including Martin's, slowed on the Thompson backstretch. Rowe and Johnny Clark were among those to remain at speed, and Rowe beat everybody back to the line. He should have been declared the winner.

PASS official Scott Reed, relaying the message from president and race director Tom Mayberry, said that the leaders never took the white flag. Reed said that the white flag was in the air, but that the field never crossed the start-finish line on the track before Bellefleur's accident.

It's simply not true.

Bellefleur said the only reason he was racing so hard was because he knew he was on the last lap.

Under PASS rules, with the white flag displayed, Rowe should have been the winner. He was the first one back to the start-finish line.

But even for the sake of argument, had the white flag not come out, as PASS officials contend, Martin still never should have been declared the winner -- officially or unofficially. On the ensuing restart, he was on the throttle before the cars even hit turn 4.

Rowe was to the outside of Martin.

"I was going to try and jump the start," Rowe said while standing in the pit area an hour after the race ended -- waiting, like everyone else, for some idea of who finished where. "But I couldn't, because by the time I was ready to go, (Martin) was already long gone."

Martin should have been black-flagged for jumping the key restart. It's in the rules.

Of course, all of this is a moot point -- because we don't even have so much as an "unofficial" finishing order to turn to.

Nothing.

It's as if every time something controversial happens in a PASS event, the series simply wants to turn its collective head aside and pretend none of it ever happened. Does Kyle Busch's 2-tire change at All-Star Speedway in June of 2007 ring a bell?

If you're truly trying to spread the brand of Super Late Model racing, if you're truly trying to get more fans interested and get more teams to sign on and help grow the series, you're never going to do so with nights like Saturday.

Who could ever take seriously a race organization that makes things up as it goes?