This past weekend, NASCAR finally returned from Summer Break.
Due to Sunday’s (Aug. 11) final day of the Summer Olympics, NBC Sports insisted upon a late afternoon/twilight race at Richmond Raceway. A 6 p.m. ET start for a Sunday race on a non-holiday weekend is far from ideal. What did fans get? A race that will be memorable for all the wrong reasons.
In all seriousness, had Ricky Stenhouse Jr. not gotten into Ryan Preece and created the final caution, Austin Dillon would’ve had his most impressive victory in the NASCAR Cup Series. Instead, we have the most ridiculous of his five career victories.
Dillon just didn’t get a very good final restart and Joey Logano got past him cleanly. Now, Dillon had gotten by him twice in the final 100 laps, so it was plausible that he could have gotten him back, but he lost too much ground. So, he tried a desperate move.
Jeff Burton stated upfront that there was a good chance for shenanigans if Dillon got back to Logano. However, Logano just got a better run off of turn 2 and had a couple of car lengths on Dillon. What happened in turn 3 appears to be that Dillon took his car into the turn harder than he ever had before.
The in-car camera seems to indicate that Dillon was braking, just not as hard as he normally would. That allowed him to get to Logano’s bumper. Do I think he just wanted to give him a bump-and-run? That’s what Dillon claimed in his press conference Sunday night.
Perhaps that’s actually true, but he was going too fast into the corner to do that. Hitting Logano at that speed was going to spin him out, no matter what.
The secondary hit on Hamlin was even more egregious. He hit Hamlin in the right rear for no other reason than to put him in the wall. That’s bush-league trash right there. It just shows me that Dillon has no regard for his fellow drivers if he thinks that’s a good idea. If this were anywhere else outside of NASCAR’s National Series, he’d be looking at a DQ and a suspension.
The most likely move that will get a penalty out of Sunday was what Logano did on pit road after the race when he gunned it in front of a group of people that included Johnny Morris, Whitney Dillon and Mariel Swan, among others. That was intolerable. You could see that live on the broadcast via a triple box, but it wasn’t referenced on it by the booth. Here’s a better view of what that looked like. Obviously, the NASCAR official wasn’t happy with Logano because he was cussing him out.
Marty Snider did the post-race interview with Dillon and he didn’t hold back. He point-blank asked Dillon if he thought what he did was right. Dillon basically claimed that he had to do it. If that’s so, that is a foundational issue with NASCAR’s “Win and you’re in” playoff format at the moment. Yes, he hasn’t had a chance to win a race in two years. Yes, he was 32nd in points entering the race (26th now) and winning was the only way he was going to get into the playoffs. As far as I’m concerned, he’s Public Enemy No. 1 in the garage right now. A lot of people there likely lost respect for him.
Everyone else was upset with Dillon’s actions. Logano was naturally angry with him. Tyler Reddick was upset even though he technically benefited from Dillon’s actions.
Since this was the big story of the race (and almost the only big story to come out of the race), everyone who spoke on camera after the race gave their opinions of it, even Ross Chastain, who probably wasn’t the right person to ask about it. He was probably more bummed about falling out of the playoffs due to Dillon’s victory than anything else, but happy that he was able to progress up the order after starting 22nd.
Even the Stenhouse-Preece crash seemed rather suspect. I wouldn’t be shocked if it were intentional. Unfortunately, the coverage on USA Network was a little inconclusive on that issue. Stenhouse appeared upset that he had to race Preece in the closing laps, though.
The second biggest story Sunday was the usage of the option tire on Sunday. You had a number of different strategies being brought into play. Most of the top teams saved both sets for the final stage. Daniel Suarez used one at the beginning of stage two, then kept himself up there once he switched back to the regular tires. That is more telling than anything else.
NASCAR’s Loop Data indicates that there were 167 more passes under green Sunday than in last year’s race, an increase of a little more than 4%. However, a lot of those passes were teams flying up the order with the option tires, or down the order when everyone was on the option and certain drivers weren’t. As a result, it is rather difficult to be able to tell whether having the option tires available made the Cook Out 400 a better race. A more interesting one from a strategy standpoint, sure. I think if the whole race ran on the regular tires, there would have been less passing than last year by a fair amount.
Luckily, this race was on the right channel for a strategy race. The different compounds were denoted in the pylon using either a yellow or red chiclet. There was a lot of analysis around when it would be the best time to put certain tires on and how long the option tires would last. Given the situation, that was necessary and it worked well.
The option tire setup worked way better at Richmond than it did at North Wilkesboro Speedway. With new pavement, it was never going to work at the All-Star Race. However, dark red for the tire lettering is not the easiest to see on a tire at night. If NASCAR wants to continue with this, I’d recommend changing that to Dayglo orange or pink.
Racing-wise, USA Network did a decent job in showing racing for position, but that racing really seemed to occur mostly early in the race. Later on, a lot of the position shifting you saw on USA Network primarily came because of the tire compounds.
The compounds resulted in some moves that really didn’t make sense. Suarez pitted for what seemed like his final stop with 50 laps to go. He then stopped again 20 laps later to put on the option tires. With that, he got up to sixth before the final caution flew. Being out of option tires at that point, he ended up 10th. I feel like he finished right where he would have had he not made the stop for option tires, but you can’t predict Stenhouse running into Preece.
I would have liked for the broadcast to be more inclusive of all the teams in the race. It seemed like a lot of the drivers were outright invisible for much of the night. For the most part, that included drivers like Kyle Larson. You just never heard from him unless he was trying an alternate pit strategy.
Yes, NBC Sports has Through the Field, but what I’d like to see is more storylines being covered in general, especially if the action at the front isn’t quite as exciting. Sunday night’s race set an all-time record for lead changes at Richmond with 26, a lot of those were due to green-flag stops. Less than 10 of those lead changes were on-track competitive changes.
Had Dillon not done what he did Sunday, the Cook Out 400 would be remembered as something of an experiment. Maybe not the most exciting race, but it seemed like the option tire setup worked to a certain degree to mask the Next Gen car’s short track habits. Now, it will be remembered for bad behavior.
Sure, that kind of stuff will make SportsCenter, but is that how you want people to think of the sport? I don’t.
Dillon’s actions overshadowed the entire night. NBC Sports realized that quickly, then went overboard with trying to get everyone to chime in after the race, including those not directly involved. It was unnecessary.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend will see NASCAR make its one visit of the season to Michigan International Speedway. It will be a tripleheader weekend with the NASCAR Cup Series as the main show with the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the ARCA Menards Series in support. ARCA teams will then travel to Illinois for a 100-mile race at The Springfield Mile on Sunday (Aug. 18). INDYCAR returns to action at World Wide Technology Raceway, while SRO America will be at Road America. TV listings can be found here.
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About the author
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.
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Some changes should be coming all around, for what dignity is left of this wreckfest called a “sport”. Does NASCAR want entertainment, a blood thirsty hate for some drivers so called “fans” irrationally have no matter what?
Or a sport that true sport lovers could respect, regardless of the outcome? They cannot have it both ways, that situation is long past. Do we want idiot crew yelling every week “wreck him” “wreck him” and the idiot driver does it, or do we truly want a fair battle?
NASCAR only cares about , money, twitter ratings and the good ole boy network.
They don’t have the guts to do anything substantial, Childress is King of good ole boys club, they hope in 2 weeks all this blows over, and the media move# onto something else.
I’ve heard the word Entertainment way to much from Daytona lately, my moneys on No Action from them, the sport continue to erode, son to be a laughingstock, if not already.
Take another look Phil, Dillon was more than 2 car lengths behind going into turn 3. And Dillon lost all respect in the garage when he turned Almarola in the Daytona 500 for the win. Dale jr proposed a suspension, that’s nothing. Nothing short of taking the win away is right and Nascar is to chicken to do that to Richard. Dillon will race in Brian’s playoffs.