Denny Hamlin was issued a pit-road penalty for an uncontrolled tire during the Camping World 400 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Chicagoland Speedway on June 30.
After that penalty he finished the race in the 15th position. After teams arrived at Daytona International Speedway for Saturday night's Coke Zero Sugar 400, officials from his #11 Joe Gibbs Racing team met with NASCAR officials Thursday afternoon to discuss the rule and Hamlin's penalty from the Chicagoland race.
"I don’t know what they can change, but I would like to see a change,” Hamlin said. "I think rules have to evolve, and this is not about us in particular. I made a comment and it has 3,000 likes, 500 retweets, 300 comments, so it touches the fan base.
"These are people that aren’t Denny fans; they just don’t get it. If they don’t get it at home, then it’s probably not a rule that needs to be in place in the Cup series, because you can’t explain it to them. It’s hard to explain when a tire is just sitting there that it’s uncontrolled. It’s not moving. It is controlled. I don’t know the answer, and I don’t know how to fix it. They are pretty smart, and I’m sure they can make adjustments to fix it to make it a little more simple. But overall, everyone’s arms are a different length.
"So, what is an arm’s length? Do they have some kind of technology that says ‘Ok this distance from the tire changer to the tire is more than an arm’s length and they can pull a measuring out and they can measure it?’ I don’t know, but that’s just too much rules. Too many things that can change the ultimate outcome of a race. We had earned our spot up front. That’s the crappy part about it. We had earned our position up there.
"Then, you have to go to the back and in today’s racing, it’s harder than that ever to be able to come back. It’s virtually impossible to be able to come back now, no matter how fast your car is because everyone is running so much wide-open throttle. It changes your race; it changes how you are going to finish. It’s up to us to play by the rules that have been given to us, let’s be clear about that, but we think we are doing that. Sometimes, that judgement call doesn’t go your way and it’s been multiple times this year, that we don’t know what we could have done differently, and we are going to need that explanation so that we don’t do it again.”
NASCAR's rule classifies a tire as "controlled" as long as it remains within arm's length of a pit-crew member moving in the same direction as the tire when it is rolled out of the out half of the pit box and doesn't roll into another pit box. The tire for which Hamlin was penalized was not moving but was more than awn arm's length away from any of his pit-crew members.
Hamlin also contends that the rule isn't being enforced consistently.
“The team officials have showed me in emails what they have prepared of multiple pit stops just from last week that are identical or more egregious than ours, and nothing gets called,” Hamlin said, as quoted in an NBC Sports article. “Is it just because they happen to be looking at you, you get judged? It’s hard for me to believe that inside the system, it flags you when a tire isn’t moving. It seems like wherever their eyeballs are on that particular stop is who gets especially looked at, but we have multiple video evidence of other pit stops from other race teams that are identical. You can not draw a difference between them and no penalty. That’s my complaint. It is a judgment call. It’s not black and white. There is no line. It’s not a line that gets crossed, it’s ‘Uh, yeah, it looks a little more than arm’s length.’”
NASCAR transitioned four years ago to an officiating system that puts most officials in a trailer, observing monitors showing live footage from pit-road cameras.
The number of uncontrolled-tire penalties has increased since NASCAR reduced the number of allowable over-the-wall pit crew members from six to five. That reduction resulted in teams going from two to one tire carrier on their crews.
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