A large debate within the NASCAR community has been whether or not Denny Hamlin jumped the overtime restart in Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond (Va.) Raceway.
Hamlin, who came off pit road prior to the restart as the leader, was the control car that decided when the field accelerated to take the green flag.
It appeared Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota accelerated before the restart zone, however, no penalty was handed down.
Hamlin went on to win his second NASCAR Cup Series race of the season and the 53rd of his career.
On Monday during his podcast, Actions Detrimental, Hamlin admitted he “went pretty early in the zone.”
“It’s a restart zone,” Hamlin said with an emphasis on “zone.”
He defended his approach.
“Certainly, if you fire in a zone that they know you’re going to fire in, let’s not even say zone, in a spot. If they know you’re going to fire in a spot, they can actually fire before you. On TV, (it) will not look like they did,” Hamlin said.
“I concede that on TV, it looks worse than what it felt like in the car. Now, a lot of the reason of that is that when I’m restarting the race, I’m not looking at the flagman, I’m not looking at my dash, I’m not looking at anything. All I’m looking at is my mirror and my side peripheral.
“All I’m doing is trying to time this person’s run. What speed is the outside car going? Then I’m looking in the mirror, to see, ‘OK, how close is the car behind me?’”
Hamlin felt the drivers around him dictated his restart, which in turn, forced him to protect the lead.
“Clearly, Joey (Logano) is laying back,” Hamlin said. “If we really want to get into technicalities, you should not be laying back. If you lay back enough to where I can see him start to creep toward me.
“At that point, I’m thinking in my head, ‘I’m not gonna let him roll to me, and then as soon as the gap closes, take off.’ Because then he’s got an advantage. He’s gonna be pushing me, he’s gonna pull out of line.
“He dictated the restart, not me.”
On Tuesday, NASCAR’s Senior Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer, discussed the issue during an appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
“As I looked at it yesterday again, multiple times, there’s no doubt he rolled early,” Sawyer said. “Again, it’s a bang-bang call.
“It’s at the end of the race. We’re a live sporting event. We don’t have the luxury of a timeout and go to the sidelines, review it and make that call.”
While Hamlin gained an advantage, he still dove into turn one side-by-side with teammate Martin Truex Jr., before ultimately snagging the lead and the victory.
Sawyer also mentioned that “if this happens at lap 10 or 50 or 300, the call could have been different.”
The immediate question arises – if NASCAR penalizes drivers earlier in the race, but not later in the race, why not do it all the time?
Sawyer denounced the idea of that happening in the future.
“If I’m a competitor, I wouldn’t be playing that game every week,” he said.