The cutoff race at Martinsville Speedway had all the ingredients of a thrilling NASCAR race. Be it late-race lead changes or controversies, the race delivered on all fronts. However, Christopher Bell’s last lap dramatic hail melon finish was the one that quickly became the talking point. Although Bell initially looked to have made the cut for the final 4, NASCAR’s intervention saw him lose his spot to William Byron.

While there were debates and heated discussions about Bell’s last-lap antics, his teammate Denny Hamlin felt that NASCAR made the right call. For some, this might come as a surprise, but Hamlin, out of all the drivers, knows what it is like to be on the receiving end of a hail melon move. Despite agreeing with the call, he couldn’t help but highlight the gray area, which allows NASCAR to choose what they feel like penalizing.

NASCAR can bend the rules according to their liking

Bell’s move wasn’t exactly the same as what Ross Chastain pulled off back in 2022. However, the #20 Toyota Camry got loose after making an aggressive pass on the #23 car, and with the momentum, the driver couldn’t make the corner. With a spot in the championship 4 on the line, the JGR driver shipped his car into the wall and went wide open. Now, it is hard to judge if Bell would’ve been able to avoid the contact or if his wall riding was intentional.

But ever since Chastain drove his way in the final 4, the teams and drivers had decided to ban the hail melon move. This was looked at as a safety concern, and all parties agreed to stray away from entertaining such a move in the future, and that is exactly what NASCAR did last Sunday. The only catch here is that there is no specific rule about penalizing the drivers for riding the wall. And this is what stood out for Denny Hamlin as he highlighted NASCAR’s smart tactics to deal with controversial calls.

“I think they made the right call. I don’t like it, but they wanted to avoid us wall-riding on the last laps to either gain or defend positions, and C Bell didn’t have to do it… Now there is no rule against wall riding. The preface is that it just says anything that we deem. NASCAR is really good at this, just putting sentences in that are so vague that allows them to kind of do whatever they want to do.” Denny Hamlin said this on the Actions Detrimental podcast. 

The veteran driver also went on to explain why the move was banned in the first place. “Simply because we don’t want to have to go in corners wide open and destroy the car for the owners that’s 300-400 grand, and then you got the safety aspect of it. No telling what could come off the car and go into the stands, right? So that’s why they put this under the quote-on-quote safety violation.”

However, this wasn’t the only controversy that played out in the final few laps. Perhaps NASCAR dodged a bullet in handing out a verdict on potential race manipulation tactics that involved both Christopher Bell and William Byron.

NASCAR is planning to investigate race manipulation tactics by the drivers

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Christopher Bell’s wall ride was an easy black-and-white call for NASCAR to make in the heat of the moment. But, there was more to it than just the hail melon finish. Austin Dillon and Ross Chastain looked to defend the #24 of William Byron from the rest of the field. Byron was on the verge of crashing out of the championship spot if he was passed by a single car, which obviously didn’t happen.

On the other hand, Bubba Wallace driving the #23 car also surprisingly slowed down on the last lap, allowing fellow Toyota driver Bell to make that pass. This scenario somewhat resembled the infamous Spingate, which led to the downfall of Michael Waltrip Racing back in 2013. Although NASCAR seemed to steer clear of making a controversial call, they are looking into the incident. This could result in potential penalties or fines this week ahead of the finale in Phoenix.

“Yeah, we’ll look at everything. As I said earlier, we want to go back, as we would have done anyway. We’ll get back. We’ll take all the data and video, we’ll listen to in-car audio, we’ll do all that, as we would any event.” NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, Elton Sawyer, said this in a press conference after the race at Martinsville.

It will be interesting to see if there are any repercussions for William Byron and the #24 team. They are the ones who were allowed to advance to the finale race, while Bell crashed out.