Michael McDowell believes the wrong conversation has taken place this week.
“What I can’t understand is why y’all aren’t talking about [Kyle] Larson and [Joey] Logano,” McDowell said about the restart discussion that continues from Richmond Raceway. “They should have been penalized for laying back. Clear as day. They were both a car length back; both of them should have been penalized. There’s no question about that one.”
The conversation has focused mainly on Denny Hamlin jumping the overtime restart at Richmond – Hamlin was the control car and admitted that he rolled before getting to the line that designates the start of the restart zone because he didn’t want to lose his advantage seeing others lagging back.
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NASCAR didn’t make a call to penalize Hamlin, saying it was ‘awful close’ after initially reviewing the restart. NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer admitted that Hamlin had gone early, and further said it’s a call that would have been looked at differently had it occurred earlier in the race.
Earlier this week, Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Josh Berry and Ryan Preece spoke adamantly about the leader needing to keep their advantage on restarts. Neither driver felt Hamlin necessarily did anything wrong.
On Saturday at Martinsville Speedway, the conversation continued with more Cup Series drivers. McDowell, like Berry and Preece, seemed unfazed by what happened.
“Because the leader should have the advantage,” the Front Row Motorsports driver said.
McDowell pointed to other forms of motorsports, where the leader can restart wherever they want. He pointed to how restarts work in the NTT IndyCar series and Formula 1. However, in NASCAR, McDowell said it’s about the entertainment of the field being two and three-wide and putting on a show at the end of the race.
“I listened a little bit to different podcasts and Race Hub, and social media, and I think for the fans it’s probably a bit confusing because there is a hard line (on the racetrack),” McDowell said. “For me, it wasn’t. I think if you’re the leader, you should have the advantage under every circumstance. There should never be a situation where the leader doesn’t have the advantage on a restart. Do we need to change the line, the box, the rules, all these things? I don’t know. I just don’t want to take away the leader’s opportunity to win the race by putting so many parameters around everything.
“I’m a fan of the leader just goes whenever he wants to go and there not be any box. Whether that’s the middle of the back straightaway or the front straightaway.”
Two-time Cup series champion Kyle Busch acknowledged if Hamlin’s jump had been earlier in the race, it likely would have been reviewed and called. But Busch said NASCAR is prone to let things go at the end of a race.
“We look at bump and runs, dump and runs,” Busch said. “A guy blatantly takes out another guy and gets to score the win because they aren’t going to strip that for rough driving or something else. I feel like that’s their mentality, a little bit of not wanting to be involved in a finish that strips a win.”
NASCAR implemented a restart zone in 2009, which was the same year double-file restarts were introduced. Previously, the race leader lined up on the outside of the front row with lapped cars to their inside. It was at the leader’s discretion to restart the race between Turn 4 and the start/finish line.
The restart zone is clearly defined on each racetrack. There are also orange neon markings on the top of the outside wall to help the driver’s sightlines and usually, in blue, ‘GEICO Restart Zone’ is painted on the wall.
“I’m not surprised by the call,” Ross Chastain said. “I’m not surprised by the move, by the cars involved at the front of the field. Not saying I’m going to do the same thing because if everyone just goes early, then there is no advantage. So, the advantage is doing what your competitors beside you and behind you don’t expect. I don’t expect all restarts to fire in Turn 3 this weekend by any means. But there are two lines for a reason and we all know that.
“The scary part is when do the reactionary calls change. When is that a penalty at the end of the race or lap 10 or 30 or 300? Being that first guy who gets called for going the same distance early would be tough to swallow.”
A driver pushing their luck in the restart zone is not new, and something Kyle Larson said everyone does, especially at the end of a race. Hamlin was not the first driver Larson had seen go before the restart zone.
“It’s always been a game,” he said. “I don’t really know how I necessarily view it. I can see all sides of it. There are lines on the racetrack, so this could be your line that you have to go by. But also, as the leader, you need to have full control of the lead, and the zones are so small that the leader, most times or at least half of the time, I feel like, is at a disadvantage because that zone is so small and easy to predict and time when they go.”
Larson would like to see NASCAR go back to a larger restart zone. An expanded restart zone (by 50 percent) was something NASCAR did briefly implement at the beginning of last season, which gave the leader more time to decide when to hit the gas. It made restarts less predictable.
“I think that helps the leader, and you see less games outside the zone,” Larson continued. “I think you get more strategy going within the zone, which is fair. But Fontana, everybody behind [Joey] Logano, tried predicting when he was going to go, and he just waited until the end of the zone, which was legal. And they all crashed and then NASCAR thought it was a zone length issue when it really was just a competitor issue.
“I would just like to see the zone a lot bigger; even bigger than it used to be or was early last year because then I think you get those – I hate to call it games – strategical moves within the zone. I think you’d see less jumping the start if the zone was longer.”
The debate will likely continue, as will questions from drivers on what’s legal and not. But for Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, there seems to be a consensus that NASCAR will be closely watching restarts, and no driver is likely to try to get away with something like Hamlin did, as Austin Cindric said, “all I know is, you’d be really dumb to try and jump it this week.”
