The ending of the NASCAR Cup Series race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway raised a lot of questions. After the final restart, Ryan Preece spun before the white flag fell. The organizers decided to wait and see if the Stewart-Haas racing driver could roll the car off the racing surface.
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However, with no gas and a flat tire rejoining the race was not a possibility. So the caution came but after race leader Kyle Larson took the white flag. This sparked a huge debate in the racing community that NASCAR was favoring the Hendrick Motorsports driver, but was that the case?
“We’re trying to give that car every opportunity to get started, get rolling, and let the race end naturally,” Sawyer had said on SiriusXM Radio. “As we came off Turn 4 coming to the start/finish line to the white, it’s a two-and-a-half-mile racetrack so you still have a lot of racing that can happen. As the cars started to get off in Turn 1, you’re starting to get closer to having to make a decision.”
Not a lot of people were happy with how NASCAR officiated the whole fiasco, but they had their reasons for the decision. At that point in the race, it was the second overtime. A lot of the cars were low on fuel and would have had trouble finishing the race had the yellow come out again.
Then there is the element of chaos. Overtime restarts are characterized by drivers desperately trying to gain position and finish as high up as possible. This leads to wrecks and the cycle of overtime restarts continues.
Just a few weeks ago in Nashville, there were five overtime restarts, the most in the history of the sport. Even then, fans were not happy with the officiating. Situations like these leave NASCAR in a tough spot because you can’t satisfy everyone. Larson winning the race at Indianapolis was just circumstantial.
However, the mentality among the fans following the Indianapolis weekend was that NASCAR was favoring Hendrick Motorsports and Yung Money. The yellow flag decision was not the only controversial moment of that restart. Before the green flag fell, Brad Keselowski was on the inside of Ryan Blaney. The #6 was low on fuel and had to come into the pits. This gave the #5 car the opportunity to the drive to the inside of the #12 before the restart.
This made the Team Penske star ballistic as he hurled profanities toward NASCAR for giving the race victory to the “f*cking golden boy.” Had it been Keselowski (low on fuel) on the inside, Blaney could have made the pass on the outside for the win. Unfortunately for him, that was not the case.
