Oh boy. Here we go again.
We had heck go down Sunday (Nov. 3) at Martinsville Speedway. If you’re late to the party, we’ve got a penalty being handed down to Christopher Bell for wall riding and potential manipulation of the race.
This whole thing angers me.
I vehemently dislike the idea of the playoffs existing in the first place and this situation only puts more fuel on the fire. It makes me think, “Why can’t we have nice things?” Regardless of what happens, NASCAR will have to make some kind of statement on what the deuce happened at some point this week before it goes to Phoenix Raceway. It has to.
Toward the end of the race, Ryan Blaney was pulling away from the rest of the leaders to take a well-deserved victory. Meanwhile, NBC had its triple box in use to cover both William Byron, who was trying to keep himself far enough ahead to get in the Championship 4 on points and Bell in addition to Blaney.
Byron lost positions to Austin Cindric and Denny Hamlin and was doing his darndest to hold off Austin Dillon…or so it seemed. Then, Ross Chastain entered the conversation. Suddenly, Byron was seemingly blocking both lines to prevent either driver from passing, which bunched up the pack.
Bell, who was running 19th, ran up on this pack just as they caught Bubba Wallace, who apparently had a flat tire. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen evidence of it other than Wallace going up the hill on the final lap and radio chatter.
Bell overdrove turn 3, got into the wall and then rode it to 18th on-track. Had that stood, Bell would have won the Round of 8 and earned the spot in the Championship 4 on a tiebreaker over Byron.
Then, we sat and waited. It seemed like a lot longer of a wait than it was. In the 10 minutes after the announcers initially talked to Bell and Byron, NBC went through the video and audio that it had multiple times. While doing that, it aired some questionable radio chatter from a couple of the Chevrolet teams.
Now, we know that NASCAR has that audio because it has all the audio. There’s a reason why it doesn’t allow teams to use encrypted digital communications from the driver and/or spotter to the crew during races. It’s not just so that fans can listen in.
The questionable audio opened up Pandora’s box to even more of a nightmare scenario for NASCAR. If all of this was going on Sunday, what does it do? Ideally, you would have liked NASCAR to make the call that it did Sunday quicker than they did, but I do not doubt that the officials will work their butts off over the next couple of days to get this right. Honestly, if it took keeping everyone in Martinsville until 6 a.m. Monday morning to get everything ironed out, then it should have done that.
I was surprised when the results were finalized Sunday night within the normal amount of time after the race. Figured that they would have wanted to take more time.
It ultimately was a full 27 minutes after the checkered flag before the final determination was made. When it was announced, NBC re-interviewed Bell and Byron (who had already talked earlier) to get their thoughts. However, that was all viewers got since the time slot was up shortly after that.
Racing-wise, the on-track product Sunday was much better than it’s been in previous years. According to NASCAR’s Loop Data, there were almost double the number of passes under green as compared to this race last year. Last year’s race also had five more laps under green.
Why was that? The softer left-side tires may have played a role. Especially later in the race, teams were still able to go long on tires. They didn’t really pit all that much more often than last year. Even the borderline nighttime final laps still had a decent amount of action.
Naturally, since Sunday’s race was a cutoff race, there was a lot of coverage of that. It led to certain things being if not completely ignored, de-prioritized. For example, the booth made reference to Ty Gibbs having transaxle issues that resulted in him finishing 32nd five laps down.
This is just the latest issue for Gibbs, who has finished 30th or worse for the last four weeks in a row. Apparently, the team is having constant transaxle issues. Given the fact that Gibbs is a teammate of Bell and Hamlin and that the transaxle is a single source piece, I figure such an issue was worth looking into, especially since it could have conceivably affected the Championship 4.
Outside of playoff coverage, there was a good amount of racing for position. After all, green-flag passing was up nearly 100% over last year. We saw a small amount of that action, but the coverage was very much centered on the playoff drivers. I would have preferred to see more inclusive coverage.
There was a significant discussion Sunday regarding on-track conduct from drivers. Carson Hocevar triggered two separate crashes on Sunday. First, he spun out Harrison Burton in turn 3. Later on, he spun out Daniel Hemric and took out Todd Gilliland in the process in turn 1.
Here, Jeff Burton criticized Hocevar for his on-track conduct this year, as incidents like these have happened a bunch of times. It’s been better this year for Hocevar than in 2023. Last year, he intentionally wrecked a driver in this race by blatantly turning his wheel to the right. He also intentionally wrecked Corey Heim during the Craftsman 150 championship race at Phoenix Raceway.
Regardless, the driving standards that we’ve seen from drivers like Hocevar in recent years are a symptom of a bigger problem in the sport that likely has roots in the “Boys, Have At It” press conference that Robin Pemberton, then NASCAR’s vice president of competition, held prior to the 2010 season. Since then, penalties for on-track ridiculousness have decreased significantly and overall respect has decreased.
In other series outside of NASCAR, it’s gone the other direction. Heck, there was a point in Pirelli GT4 America SprintX a couple of years ago where officials got fed up with spins due to contact that they literally started parking cars for unintentional avoidable contact.
With more time to work with, it is an issue that NBC Sports should look into more. It would be interesting to know that what happens in NASCAR races affects what you see down the line.
As much as NASCAR might not like it, the goal of covering a major event such as the Xfinity 500 is to cover the race as honestly as it can with the technology that it has available. The audio chatter that aired opened up a significant additional story that viewers likely would not have known about. I’m reasonably confident that NASCAR would have preferred that it stay under wraps.
NBC did a great job in covering the post-race mess. NASCAR just screwed up and failed to make a decisive call quickly. Makes me think of David Hoots’ appearance on The Dale Jr. Download back in September. Hoots talked about how there are a lot of inexperienced people in big roles right now in the sport who have trouble being decisive. At the time, Hoots was talking about the mess at Richmond Raceway surrounding Dillon’s ridiculous actions. Sunday was just the latest example of the indecisiveness.
I would have liked to see a more inclusive broadcast on Sunday, but that’s hard to get given all the points stuff going on. Also, would have liked Jeff Burton to maybe check his information a little closer. He had a whopper of a day, including one segment with three big mistakes in a minute.
That’s all for this week. Coming up is Championship Weekend in Phoenix. It’ll be warm and the action should be interesting…assuming no shenanigans. Outside of Phoenix, DIRTcar has the World Finals this week at The Dirt Track at Charlotte, where champions will be crowned in their top series. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of the season finale from Phoenix in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. We’ll cover the Xfinity and Truck races from Martinsville in the Frontstretch Newsletter.
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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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Here go back to 2013 “spin gate” The integrity of the sport has been put into question again As far as the racing went it was entertaining but has now been overshadowed by manipulation It’s entertainment not racing so I guess you pick a lane
Interesting comments from Mr. Hoots… pretty spot on and explains much as the series we all love sinks deeper into nonrevalance and scripted endings and horrible new talent.
Top 15 drivers … good, some great… the next 10… decent.. the rest … crash test dummies. Heavy emphasis on the crash.
I have no issues with how long it took for the decision though. But the Pandoras Box is wide open now.
Playoffs? Playoffs!??? UGH
Of course they covered it! It was Mr. H vs Reverend Joe! They couldn’t have scripted it better if they knew it was coming.
Half the fans think Chevy and Hendrick pay NASCAR for wins, and the other half think Toyota and Gibbs pay NASCAR for wins.
i feel this way quite often. every once in a while someone will win that’s not them, a satellite team or affiliated to these two in any way.
Bubba looked straight into the camera and lied to us all. He’s the only one who straight up lied.
WHOA — “three mistakes in a minute” Tell me more . . .
The lack of respect in all 3 series has a ton to do with the playoff format. Its about wrecking anyone in the way to get a win. There are no clean passes anymore especially for the win. Under the current format, its not a surprise, but it is unwatchable in my opinion. That truck series race on Friday night was a joke.