SPEEDWAY, Ind. — The Brickyard 400 is officially back.
Opportunities to pass, however? That’s another story.
The NASCAR Cup Series made its annual trip to Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday (July 21), though this time, the road course was dumped in favor of the oval for the first time since 2020.
As such, this was the first time the Next Gen race car would compete on the oval. With the car performing better on intermediates and superspeedways over short tracks and road courses, hope was high that racing would be intense throughout most of the afternoon.
But after a tame first stage, it was clear that the only way to be able to make moves and have a shot to win was through pit stops. There was a noticeable lack of passing under green, which essentially led to train racing.
It was evident that the only time drivers were going to be able to gain ground under green (sans green flag pit stops) was on restarts. So following the restart to begin stage two, there was noticeable heightened aggression for drivers to get all they could.
It only took 24 laps before the aggression came to a head.
On a lap 74 restart, Chase Briscoe and William Byron made contact, turning the latter into the paths of Ryan Preece and Harrison Burton. Byron then bounced off the outside wall (which has no SAFER barrier) before sliding directly into the path of AJ Allmendinger, who tattooed Byron and sent him careening into the inside wall, destroying his No. 24.
“Got back there where we probably shouldn’t have been and got run over,” a noticeably displeased Byron said upon leaving the infield care center. “[Briscoe] was making a bunch of crazy moves down the frontstretch, then kind of missed the corner in [turn] 2, pulled up right in front of me and checked us all up.”
Allmendinger knew that restarts were going to be chaotic, especially midfield.
“The restarts, everybody’s gonna be aggressive,” Allmendinger said. “Because you know that that’s the time to make up the most spots. It’s tough to pass.”
“When you get to the outside, it’s game over here,” said Burton, whose day ended due to a broken control arm from the crash. “So everyone’s kind of fighting to try and at least be in the bottom two rows, and if you can get someone top of three[-wide], they’re gonna be 10 rows back.
“I guess that was the idea there. It just didn’t work out.”
Thirty laps later, when the race restarted for the final stage, Martin Truex Jr. collided with eventual race-winner Kyle Larson and hit the turn 3 wall. Behind him, Josh Berry got turned from behind into the turn 4 wall, a crash that ended his day.
The field couldn’t make it to turn 1 on the ensuing restart before wadding up more racecars. Carson Hocevar forced himself into a three-wide situation, with an unassuming Ryan Blaney coming down the track for the same piece of real estate. The ensuing crash knocked out Joey Logano and Jimmie Johnson, whose semi-retirement continues to be miserable despite most issues being out of his control.
“Restarts are just so aggressive,” Johnson said. “Everybody’s pushing. We’re getting to the end of the race, and it’s go time.”
“Carson had a good restart and filled a gap in the center,” Logano added. “Which, you can’t blame him for that. But he went for a little more, got a little greedy, it seemed like.
“Everyone knows [restarts are] your shot to pass. Restarts are ultra, ultra important. The strategy and the pit stops [are] ultra important. Everyone’s just going for it. These cars, it’s not like the Xfinity [Series] car where you can follow someone really close. You get close to somebody and the front ends just shut off.”
The following restart was clean, and it looked like it would be the last one with a clean green run to the finish, until Kyle Busch crashed from fifth (what does he have to do to get a good finish?) to bring out a late yellow and set up overtime.
Much like the restart where Johnson and Logano crashed, it wasn’t long before cars got together and crashed in turn 1. Contact between John Hunter Nemechek and Daniel Hemric forced both into the inside pit wall before shooting back out into traffic, into the paths of Alex Bowman, Denny Hamlin and Briscoe.
While Hamlin, Bowman, Hemric and Nemechek were all thankfully treated and released from the infield care center, there was an overwhelming frustration between them.
When asked about the restarts, Hamlin noted the lack of opportunity to pass made restarts that much more important.
“It was because you couldn’t pass,” Hamlin told Frontstretch. “We were all just kind of running in a line there, saving fuel. It’s like a [super]speedway race. We were just doing everything we could to get to the finish and didn’t make it.”
Hemric said that Indianapolis is so “lane dominant” because the bottom was the best place to be.
“Aggression is super high on the restarts,” he told Frontstretch. “It’s the Cup Series, right? I mean, you give guys a break and everybody feels like they’re always gonna get a break. You gotta continue to plug holes.”
Nemechek, who led 16 laps and looked like he was a legitimate threat to win at one point, was very blunt about the aggressive restarts.
“It’s the only time you can pass,” he said with a little smile.
The final restart went off without a hitch; however, Preece was spun down the backstretch, which should have brought out another caution. In theory. However, NASCAR chose to withhold the caution until after the leaders had taken the white flag to throw the yellow and end the race.
While Larson got to celebrate his win at the track he ran the biggest NTT IndyCar Series race at just months prior, several drivers were left frustrated with a lack of passing and an astounding level of disrespect on restarts to make up positions.
It appears that the Brickyard 400 is here to stay, at least for a little while, but NASCAR needs to figure what it can do to create more passing opportunities in the Next Gen at the most prestigious racetrack in the world.
About the author
Anthony Damcott joined Frontstretch in March 2022. Currently, he is an editor and co-authors Fire on Fridays (Fridays); he is also the primary Truck Series reporter/writer and secondary short track writer. He also serves as an at-track reporter and assists with social media when he can. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight-choreographer-in-training in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.
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