What a boring week for NASCAR, huh?
In actuality, it’s hard to go a few hours in the NASCAR world without hearing about how the Cup Series finish at Richmond Raceway has been mired in controversy over the fact that Denny Hamlin jumped the restart over Martin Truex Jr. en route to a home track win.
The NASCAR world is more or less split. There are some who believe Hamlin should have had the win rescinded and given to Joey Logano, who finished second. Others are more upset with NASCAR missing a fairly cut-and-dry call in crunch time.
The latter opinion has only been exacerbated by NASCAR Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer (a former driver himself) essentially confessing that NASCAR missed the call and the call may have been different at other stages of the race.
There have been several reactions as to how the controversy will affect future races. For example, will another driver try the same maneuver at, say, the next race at Martinsville Speedway and get away with it? What if Chase Elliott, NASCAR’s perennial most popular driver, tries it? How much will the backlash be if he gets penalized?
To paraphrase my colleague Jack Swansey from a few weeks back: Fans are quick to beg for change and then lament said change. One could only imagine how fans could react if Elliott tried that and got penalized.
We haven’t seen this much controversy over jumping the restart in probably a decade. Sure, restart violations have been called since then, but normally restart violations occur early in the race, not crunch time.
Who could forget the slew of second place drivers beating the leader back to the line and getting penalized? Luckily that rule has since been scrapped; it wasn’t fair to penalize second if the leader spun their tires on the restart.
There was also a span from 2011-2013 where crunch time restart violations had a direct hand in the finish of the race: David Ragan changing lanes before the start-finish line in the 2011 Daytona 500. Elliott Sadler jumping the final restart in the inaugural Xfinity Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2012 after getting a shove from Austin Dillon, and race leader Brad Keselowski spinning his tires. Jimmie Johnson jumping the restart in 2013 at Dover Motor Speedway that gave Tony Stewart his penultimate Cup victory.
And of course, right back at Richmond, Carl Edwards jumped a late restart that ruined his shot at winning way back in 2012. Now, 12 years later, the…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at …