CONCORD, N.C. -- Erik Jones was filming a segment for NASCAR on NBC/NBC Sports Network when he ran into an unexpected barrier.
Literally.
Jones clipped the lower section of steps that are used to cross from the grandstands into the infield at Charlotte Motor Speedway as he rounded Turn 4 on Saturday. The steps had inadvertently been left along the frontstretch wall.
.@Erik_Jones and @JeffBurton are OK after our test car clipped a set of stairs that was on the track. #NASCARPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/rlYdIlroM7
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) October 7, 2017
Jones was driving the NBC-wrapped car at the time. He was not injured.
"I never really knew what I hit," Jones said. "It was pretty wild."
Another quirky -- and much more dangerous -- situation occurred with 58 laps left in the Xfinity Series race Saturday night when the digital display board used to flash numbers of cars that must serve penalties fell off the flag stand onto the track.
NASCAR threw the caution and no driver hit the box that many drivers thought was a radiator that possibly fell out of a car.
"I didn't know what that was -- I was like, 'How did something like that fall off of somebody's car?'" quipped Sam Hornish Jr., who finished second. "I thought it maybe was a big piece of foam.
"I'm just glad I didn't hit it. Maybe it rusted after all the rain that we had."
The caution did not appear to heavily impact the race, nor who advanced in the Xfinity Series playoffs.
"Was that what the caution was for?" asked Ryan Blaney after his third-place finish. "They probably should tighten that down."
NASCAR will not use a digital display to notify drivers they are being black-flagged during the NASCAR Cup race Sunday and will instead communicate penalties over their official channels, which are already used.
"It's been secured kind of the same way for 10 years and never an issue, but when we went back and reviewed it, I think there are some changes we could have made to how it was secured," NASCAR executive vice president Steve O'Donnell said. "For today, that's not going to be up there."
It is not unprecedented that a caution light will fall off a fence during a race, but this might have been a first for the display board to fall off the flag stand.
"If you had hit that, that would have been some trouble," Elliott Sadler said.
ESPN's Bob Pockrass and The Associated Press contributed to this report.