Denny Hamlin: NASCAR threw red flag to prevent cars from running out of fuel

The ending to the Brickyard 400 was anticlimactic in a lot of ways, as the race ended under a caution. But even before that there were some signs that NASCAR was potentially trying to help drivers reach the finish line.

Following an overtime wreck that collected multiple drivers, including John Hunter Nemechek, Daniel Hemric and Alex Bowman, among others, NASCAR threw a red flag.

According to Denny Hamlin, who was also slightly involved in the big overtime pileup, that was an obvious signal.

“You don’t think they made calls different at the end of this race than what they do under normal cautions?” Hamlin asked his cohost on the Actions Detrimental podcast. “I mean they threw a red flag to help people not run out (of fuel). Normally we would have just ran under caution there at the end of that race. But they knew people were tight on gas so they stopped the race.”

Already in the race one driver had run out of fuel. Leader Brad Keselowski pushed his car to the absolute limits but was forced to head to pit road at the start of the overtime restart. That was controversial in and of itself.

The issue Hamlin had with the red flag from NASCAR was that it was different from how other races this year have been called. And the inconsistency makes it tough to figure out the right strategy.

“Yeah, I don’t love it, for sure,” Hamlin said. “That’s what I’m saying, it almost benefits you to just run out in front of the field or just run your car out of gas. Because it wreaks havoc on everything else and then at least you don’t get wrecked. I don’t know.”

What Keselowski did certainly impacted the race considerably and was one of the reasons the finish was somewhat controversial. He simply pushed until he ran out of gas. He actually made it further than many figured he would.

“I mean there was no physics of math that would have said that he would have made it that I understand,” Hamlin said. “But I don’t know. I mean we never thought Joey (Logano) was going to make it, 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.”

Bottom line: Fueling strategies often play a significant part in a race, particularly near the end.

To have an inconsistent set of rulings from NASCAR makes it incredibly difficult to plan and strategize well. It clearly impacted the end of the Brickyard 400.

“It certainly changed the outcome of the race,” Denny Hamlin said. “It was very unfortunate. The only thing is is that what do you do about it, though? Because if you throw a caution and say, ‘Hey, hold on, hold on. (Ryan) Blaney, you’re the leader now. You get to choose.’ Maybe just let Blaney start on his own row.”