Sunday, Denny Hamlin’s victory at Dover seemed safe enough with 14 laps to do.
The accident of Ross Chastain brought out a late warning flag and the rain began to pour shortly after the launch of the yellow. Hamlin headed his teammate Christopher Bell and probably thought he had his fourth victory in the bag.
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Not so fast.
The heavy rain being fairly brief, Nascar immediately worked to dry the track. About an hour after the race race, he resumed eight laps of programmed green flag.
The real number ended up being much less than that. Bell turned to trigger a multi-car-race accident with Hamlin for the head during the first restart, then Hamlin had to keep two other restarts to win his fourth series victory of the season while he kept his teammate to continue Briscoe during the last two Dubes.
It ended up being a stellar day for Hamlin on the track after a week less than ideal in the courtroom. Hamlin’s 23xi team has lost its charters with the first -row motor sport, because a federal judge refused to grant teams a temporary ban order to keep them. The decision was part of the battle of the teams of several months with Nascar on the franchise agreement of the sanction organization. 23XI and FRM continued Nascar, saying that Nascar was monopolistic because he gave his teams only hours to sign a new charter agreement in the fall of 2024.
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Sunday’s race ended up doing seven laps on its expected distance thanks to the two accidents after late rain. After Bell turned to start an accident that included Noah Gragson and William Byron, Zane Smith and Ryan Preece crashed after this restart.
Briscoe, meanwhile, crossed the ground after opposing two fresh tires immediately after the rain late. Hamlin, Bell and others at the front of the field have chosen to stay on older tires knowing that the passage was incredibly difficult all day in Dover thanks to the aerodynamic gaps of the current car series.
Rain delay has put Nascar in a unique situation. In most cases, a red flag for rain with less than 20 laps to do is equal to an automatic ending end. You can understand why. It is a lot of drying work on track for little gain. Eight laps with a green flag in Dover is less than four minutes.
But the speed of the rain – and the concrete track surface – gave Nascar a reason to think that it could end the race. And of course, it ended on a mainly dry track.
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It was a hectic gain for fans who remained both on the track and on TNT. In a slow sports afternoon after the dominant British victory for Scottie Scheffler, Nascar did not have much competition for the attention of viewers. And the protruding facts of restart make excellent social media clips.
But you can also see the argument against the restart of the race. Especially if you are a fan of Bell, Byron or any other person who saw his days go to the South after the late rain.
It would have been surprising if an accident or two did not occur during the last eight laps planned. Drivers know that restarts are their best chances of winning a track position even when the passage is not as difficult as Douvres on Sunday. The myriad of tire strategies only added this probability that the speed differences between drivers on older and more recent tires can easily create contact.
Accidents, of course, increase costs for teams. And it is a NASCAR that has reduced track time in recent years in the name of cost savings for its competitors. Even if the sun quickly shone after the rain, the reduction in the short race by only 14 laps is an easily defensible situation.
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It is, after all, a regular season race in the middle of the summer. It is not an eliminatory race. If Chastain had not crushed and the rain had struck with less than 10 laps to do, it is very easy to see how Nascar calls the race early.
But the last 20 real laps have produced more action than the first 386 laps combined to provide a significant end to what had been a snoozer of a race. If someone like Briscoe, Kyle Larson or another driver who barely led a turn all day ended up winning after the rain, the result could be difficult to spread.
Instead, the guy who won when the rain fell ended up showing why he is once again a pretender in the title by obtaining the winner’s trophy more than an hour later than what he could have expected.
