A captivating finish spiced up the NASCAR Brickyard 400 race in Indianapolis. Throughout the race, several leaders emerged at the forefront. Denny Hamlin won the first stage, then his driver, Bubba Wallace, swept up the second. But by the last few laps, the leaderboard had shuffled in a matter of seconds. And this lightning-fast development also resulted in judicial decisions that were a little hard to comprehend.

NASCAR again came on the critical radar of drivers. Ryan Blaney, one of the potential winners, saw his winning ambition snuffed out by a controversial call. But the sport’s top executive stood by the decision, breaking down the rules as NASCAR.com’s Alex Weaver cleared doubts around the late-race yellow and the first overtime restart from the Indianapolis race.

NASCAR stands by its last-lap ruling

In light of recent events, NASCAR’s judicial wing is bound to catch drivers’ fury easily. Bubba Wallace faced a controversial, hefty penalty for his Chicago actions, while Ricky Stenhouse Jr. also got slapped with a huge fine at the All-Star Race. This time, the sanctioning body ruled a little too fast on the last lap of the Brickyard 400.

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s Senior VP of Competition, emphasized thus, “It was unfortunate, but it was the right call.”

On lap 160, Kyle Busch bumped into Denny Hamlin and spun out, drawing out the tenth caution of the race. That buried race leader Brad Keselowski’s winning chances for good as he ran out of gas. This put Ryan Blaney at the top, followed by Kyle Larson. Elton Sawyer elaborated on this situation, “We were coming to green when the 6 pulled off, which allowed the 5 to pull up – which transferred the control vehicle to the 12. This all happened fairly quick there.” 

But soon after, in a matter of seconds, Kyle Larson advanced ahead of Blaney by a clear car’s length. This was immediately followed by another caution involving Hamlin, Alex Bowman, and Michael McDowell. Then NASCAR made the controversial call to hand Larson the lead after the caution.

Explaining this move, Elton Sawyer said, “I think we still let it play out the way it did. We’ll discuss that more…if we had thrown the caution, hypothetically, we wouldn’t have gone through a choose process again. The 12 would have been the control vehicle but he wouldn’t have got lane choice. That’s the way the rule is written.”

This turn of events was spelled differently for the drivers. Kyle Larson rejoiced in conquering the track where he could not pull through during his double efforts. The Hendrick win also signified the team’s 30th-anniversary maiden win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. On the other end of the spectrum, Ryan Blaney lashed out at NASCAR and Larson mid-race, but toned down his frustration after the race, knowing that NASCAR’s decision was justified.

While Blaney trumpeted his anger loudly, another driver was fairly peaceful about his slouched efforts.

Losing gas on the verge of victory can taste bitter

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Brad Keselowski‘s chances to win his second Brickyard 400 race seemed slimmer than glass at first. The No. 6 RFK Racing driver got off to a poor start at Saturday’s qualifying, starting 26th on Sunday. His fortunes spiraled further by the end of Stage 1. Keselowski was penalized for a pit exit violation on Lap 41 and stood in 36th place. But soon after, he harnessed his mojo and clawed his way back to the top.

By the end of stage 2, he had climbed 15 spots to 21st place. Then Keselowski quickly made his way up to first place in the final 60 laps. Yet Brad Keselowski knew there was a flaw in his plan—he would run out of fuel soon. The No. 6 estimated that it would happen right after he crossed the finish line. But as fate would have it, Kyle Busch’s wreck dumped Keselowski’s beautiful surge to the front row.

It was the caution on lap 160, that spoiled the driver’s winning plans. Reflecting on his bad luck with wisdom post-race, Brad said, “Maybe we could have fought it off, maybe not, I would’ve liked to have seen. We have top-10 speed, we’re not dominant but we’re really competitive. … We didn’t get yellows (flags) when we needed yellows to win today. That’ll come back to us at some point, and people will say we were really lucky and forget days like today.”

Hence, both Brad Keselowski and Ryan Blaney are wallowing in misery due to some last-lap mishaps. And NASCAR seems to be on the right track in this regard, as the rules were clearly written down.