“That’s insane. I never saw a blue light down pit road.” These words of Kyle Busch underestimate the infuriated emotions at the No. 8 pit stall. During the Pennzoil 400 race, several Cup Series drivers baffled spectators with the sheer number of pit road penalties. Ranging from three-peat winner Christopher Bell to Most Popular Driver Chase Elliott, many drivers fell prey to NASCAR’s rules. However, Denny Hamlin has an explanation for it.

The No. 11 Toyota driver also faced the ravages of NASCAR’s pit rules. Denny Hamlin was slapped with an early-race speeding penalty on pit road, getting relegated to the back of the race. He rebounded to the top ten, but Hamlin could not make it stick, finishing in 25th place. Despite his own misfortune, Hamlin defended NASCAR’s penalty.

Denny Hamlin sheds clarity on bizarre penalties

Kyle Busch entered his hometown with a hopeful heart. At Las Vegas Motor Speedway, he owns one victory and 12 top-five finishes – so this was a chance better than any to snap his 60+ race winless streak. However, chaos descended on him. He was penalized for entering too fast on pit road and dropped from fifth to 32nd. That incident flared emotions near the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing pit stall. Crew chief Randall Burnett and spotter Derek Kneeland reportedly reprimanded NASCAR officials. According to Matt Weaver, they claimed that NASCAR “never gave them a chance to pit or even address the penalty.”

Despite the raging tempers that Kyle Busch and his team displayed, Denny Hamlin offered an explanation. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver tried to clarify the timing procedure in a recent episode of ‘Actions Detrimental’: “When NASCAR does its timing between segments…They don’t actually have a radar gun pointing at other cars to determine whether you’re speeding or not… It is a time-based thing and it is black and white – boom, it will pop up red if you’re too fast in a certain section.”

The 1.5-mile oval track in Sin City was unique with the corners banked at 20 degrees and the front stretch and backstretch at 9-12 degrees. However, Denny Hamlin pointed out some other features that factored into pit road penalties: “When a track has a bend in it, they typically will drive a pace car, I think, on the inside of the bend. So they’ll cut the shortest distance, mark that as the time…We don’t travel that shortest distance because we would be in people’s pit boxes…We gotta be all the way up against the grass. But that’s a further distance…therefore we typically speed faster than the actual speed limit in corners on pit road.” 

Hamlin is essentially saying that since drivers hug the grass while entering the pit lane, they speed at corners to make up for the time they need to slow down while entering the straightaway at the pits. However, it seems like Busch simply forgot to slow down, and before he knew it, NASCAR slapped him with a penalty as the #8 team fumed.

Denny Hamlin further continued that the particular bend to the Las Vegas track confuses other drivers: “What makes this tricky is that the entrance of the pit road at Las Vegas has a slight bend to it…When it straightens out, you gotta back out to your green lights. Then as you start to exit, you gotta bend…So it’s got these nuances of straight and bend…you can manipulate it. I just think it’s a very sensitive track… historically, we’ve seen a lot of guys speed at Vegas.”

Well, the track did see a surprising number of pit crew goof-ups, with Kyle Busch even losing a tire in the middle of the race. However, nothing was more entertaining and surprising than Hamlin’s teammate Christopher Bell, who pulled off something we rarely see on a Cup Series grid.

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Unity in display in JGR fold

Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe are fast friends even outside the NASCAR world. Their bubbling relationship apparently rubbed off on their respective JGR teams as well. This was evident during a pit stop at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. With an opportunity to make history as the first four-peat Cup Series race winner since Jimmie Johnson in 2007, Bell was hopeful. However, the No. 20 Toyota’s drive derailed on lap 108. At that time, Bell left his pit stall with a loose wheel on his front left side. Right, then his crew chief Adam Stevens devised a plan unheard of in NASCAR history.

He asked Christopher Bell to stop at Chase Briscoe’s No. 19 stall to get his tire fixed. Subsequently, NASCAR hit Bell with a “pitting outside the box” penalty that relegated him to the rear. But in the process, Bell also avoided a much more harsh penalty if his tire rolled off on the racetrack. Stevens explained his decision post-race: “We thought it was going to be a good day, at least be in contention. Once we had that loose wheel, it was going to take some miracle to be racing for the win at that point.” Eventually, Bell snapped his three-race winning streak at Sin City. Despite not being able to get Jimmie Johnson’s fourth text, Bell could wash up in a decent 12th-place finish due to Adam Stevens’ timely call.

The Las Vegas event was evidently strewn with unique pit road events, both good and bad. Denny Hamlin’s explanation helps clear up things although it might annoy Kyle Busch and his team more.