Denny Hamlin: 'I don't love' Brad Keselowski refusing to pit, running out of fuel on track
The outcome of Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was changed dramatically after Brad Keselowski ran out of fuel coming to green on the first overtime restart.
As a result of Keselowski pulling out of line, Kyle Larson, running P3 at the time, inherited the bottom line on the front row next to Ryan Blaney. Larson got a good jump and cleared Blaney for the lead in Turn 1 before a caution came out. Larson held on during the second overtime attempt to score his fourth victory of the season.
Speaking on Monday’s “Actions Detrimental” podcast, Denny Hamlin said he wasn’t a fan of Keselowski trying to stretch it on low fuel when all of the data didn’t support he had enough to make it.
“I don’t love it for sure,” Hamlin said. “It almost benefits you to just run out in front of the field. Or just you run your car out of gas because it wreaks havoc on everyone else and then at least you don’t get wrecked. I mean, there was no physics of math that would have said he would’ve made it that I understand. But I don’t know. We never thought Joey [Logano] was gonna make it [at Nashville].
“But when you look at where Joey was running, he was running 15th at Nashville. The pace he was running was significantly slower than the leaders. Brad was the leader and stretched it to an unknown amount. It certainly changed the outcome of the race. It was very unfortunate. The only thing is what do you about it though because if you throw a caution and say, ‘hold on, Blaney, you’re the leader now.’ Maybe just let Blaney start on his own row.”
Brad Keselowski runs out of gas, costs Ryan Blaney potential victory in Brickyard 400
As a result of Keselowski running out of gas, Larson got the win and Blaney came out quite irritated at how it all unfolded. As Hamlin mentioned, Keselowski’s strategy to attempt to make it on low fuel was the same strategy Joey Logano used to win at Nashville last month. It didn’t work out the same way for Keselowski, who understands the frustration from Blaney.
“Looks like we had enough fuel to run one lap, it just didn’t pick up for some reason. If you look at the Nashville race, this strategy won when yellow came out on last lap. So, definitely worth the risk,” Keselowski wrote Monday on X. “More work to do to understand why it didn’t pick up. Can understand the 12 team frustration.”
Blaney felt like NASCAR had screwed him and didn’t think the restart should have continued after Keselowski ran out of fuel before reaching the start-finish line.
“There’s no way they should’ve let that go green,” Blaney said. “That’s ridiculous. They just gave it to him [Larson]. It’s fu*king over, I’m on the top. I ain’t gonna win from the top. Gave it to fu*king golden boy. Son of a b*tch.”