Denny Hamlin has surprising theory on why NASCAR didn't enforce Turn 6 track limits at COTA

Denny Hamlin has an interesting theory on why NASCAR didn’t enforce Turn 6 track limits at the COTA Cup Series race on Sunday. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin explained why NASCAR didn’t call out drivers for cutting the turn short.

“My theory is the reason they chose not to judge Turn 6 is because there’s a clear view on TV whether you shortcut it, and they don’t want a bunch of criticism that they missed this call, missed that call,” Hamlin said. “The other corners, they had NASCAR’s personal cameras on the crossovers. They had it facing both ways, where they had clear views of three, four, five with their own cameras.

“In six, if someone shortcut it, you would see it. You’d see it on TV right away. Maybe they just did not want to go through the criticism of not getting every single car that did it. But to their credit, after practice, they would send screenshots of everyone who would be called shortcutting in the race. They gave us all warnings Saturday night, saying, ‘Here’s your car in practice, this will be a penalty tomorrow.'”

Denny Hamlin added, “The cameras that they had set up were really good, really efficient, really clear. I just think that in Turn 6… I’m looking around where would they mount their own camera to monitor it. Really, you’d have to just rely on TV, I think. I don’t think it really changed much. I think some people got the word sooner than others that it was going to be called.”

NASCAR official shares more on Turn 6 track limits at COTA

Multiple NASCAR drivers were confused about Turn 6 at COTA, assuming they could shortcut it. On Tuesday, Brad Moran, NASCAR’s managing director of the Cup Series, appeared on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio and explained what happened on Sunday.

“We did a lot of work communicating and felt we were in a good place and then going into the Cup race on Sunday, in the first stage we caught on a team’s scanner they weren’t sure about short-cutting Turn 6. Obviously, we watched it take place from the beginning of the race, and we didn’t have an issue with it,”  Moran said.

“At that point, we have a communication system from the tower that can go to all the teams on pit road, penalties or any other messages. … We did fire out just to confirm we’re not policing Turn 6. And then from that point on, it played out well. But there was some confusion because we had a lot of teams that didn’t have questions, and I think we had a few that did have questions, and that’s our responsibility to make sure all the competitors understand. We will not make that error again.”

On3’s Nick Geddes contributed to the story.