NASCAR officials will review film and discuss with teams any scoring questions arising from Sunday’s confusing Goody’s Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
In a sequence that began when a caution came out during a series of green-flag pit stops, the leader then ran out of fuel and a slate of drivers were trying to take the wavearound to regain a lap.
That series of events led to confusion over where everyone should line up and NASCAR was left working slowly to make sure that the field was in the right order. The decision-making combined with the initial caution took 29 laps, and 25 minutes, 19 seconds. After the race some were still questioning where drivers had lined up.
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Denny Hamlin, who went on to finish third in the race, discussed the issue shortly after climbing from his car. He said he was confused by the scoring, then listed specific drivers he felt picked up extra positions in the reset.
“The 83 (Dylan Lupton), the 4 (Kevin Harvick), the 42 (Kyle Larson) and the 6 (Trevor Bayne) just blew right by us trying to steal a lap back and two of them got away with it,” he said. “We’re in the big leagues and you have to get it right. Even if they had to red flag it to review the tape, I mean I had 20 cameras on my car, one of them saw those guys going around us. It’s disappointing, but it doesn’t affect our day.”
With the Chase for the Sprint Cup field so close, and with this being the opening race of the third and final segment before the championship race, NASCAR appeared to be trying to be conscientious in making the decisions on where everyone should be.
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Brad Keselowski, who finished second and is not in the Chase, tired to dodge questions when asked about it during postrace.
“I know what you're thinking,” he said. “I'm thinking it, too. You can say it, I can't. We don't need to run a hundred laps under yellow with the field trying to figure out where they're at. It probably cost us the race.”
Fans and reporters on scene expressed confusion on social media as things were sorted out. When interviewed after the race, Richard Buck, the managing director of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, told NBCSN that the sanctioning body had not gotten any questions about it yet — but he certainly was expecting some.
He told NBCSN that it’s a complex process that was dealt a blow when things kept changing.
“We took our time,” he told the network. “We want to get it right. We know what the stakes are and we felt we got it right and that’s where we’re at.”
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He says that NASCAR had to freeze the moment and sync up video from numerous cameras and added that officials will have conversations this week with those who have questions.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was watching the race from the NBC TV booth, agreed with NASCAR's move to delay the restart until it sorted out the field.
"NASCAR is doing the right thing here, taking their time to get all this sorted out. And the drivers agree with this as well," he said. "When this doesn’t happen, when we don’t like the lineup and NASCAR allows us to race, the drivers all complain afterwards. I like the fact that they are going to get this sorted out, and get this thing correct before we go back to green. There is too much at stake.”
But with this being the first race of this round of the Chase, everyone knew the stakes were high.
For that reason, Buck felt it was worth investing extra time to sort things out.
“We understand the stakes and they’re extremely high and that’s what makes great racing," he said. "… It was dynamic, it was always changing, they kept throwing curveballs at us and to make sure that we didn’t get confused, that we got all the data, and that we got it right when we came back to green, we felt we had the lineup right and here we are."