They saved fuel for half the raceThey then tried to race and immediately crashed nearly the entire fieldThey were then stuck 2x2 and were unable to pass the front row
"You said it perfectly," said Ryan Blaney after the massive 26-car crash at the start of the final stage. “We’re either fuel saving or we’re running all over each other because that’s just what this car is and that’s how you move forward.
"You’re just running through and it’s however hard you can push someone and the cars are so unstable in the back that they get ping ponging and can’t take it."
Despite the best efforts from NASCAR to try to shake up the superspeedway product this weekend by reversing the cadence of the race, everything that needs addressing during the off-season was on full display.
Because this car has so much inherent drag, it’s impossible for a driver to pull out of line and attempt to form a new line. Recognizing this, the only way to get track position is for drivers to save fuel and spend less time on pit road while refueling.
But fans rejected drivers running around at partial throttle so NASCAR effectively flipped the race so that all the fuel saving took place in the first half. Once the first-of-two full-throttle stages began, it immediately resulted in a 26-car crash.
Carson Hocevar and Chris Buescher started the final stage on the front row and they controlled the race from that point to the very end. A driver from the second row on back couldn’t jump out of line because they would simply fall to the tail end of the field.
Pushing Hocevar to the win, Alex Bowman said there was very little he could do to control his own destiny in that scenario.
“Really, the only thing is push (Hocevar) out far enough to feel like he needed to defend the top lane and playing both sides,” Bowman said. “Once he starts moving, there might be an opportunity to get clear but that didn’t happen.
“I don’t think there was an opportunity for me to move up and I don’t think I would have, statistically, because these races are mostly won from the bottom. It’s hard to say if I could have done anything differently.
Chase Elliott was third on the outside and didn’t have any options on the table either.
“It was tough to do anything,” Elliott said. “You just kind of get yourself in line and do the best you can. For me, that was pushing (Ricky Stenhouse) and try to give him the best pushes I could and hope something would form for me, with that.
“It seemed like we couldn’t get a big enough run to make our lane do something different. We tried and those runs just didn’t go anywhere.”
“It’s really hard to do anything,” Elliott said. “You’re just stuck in that situation. The first stage was interesting. I didn’t know who was going to stretch it or two stop it. But we were going really slow doing it. I felt like we were going really slow.
“You get to the end and it’s just a death trap to pull out of line and try a third lane. It just doesn’t go when everyone is pushing at that pace on the bottom two lanes.”
Alex Bowman says solving this dilemma is going to take ‘a massive change’ with the race car.
“Fundamentally, if that’s downforce, horsepower or drag; tire,” Bowman said. “I have no idea. I personally feel like the car is so draggy that when you pull out of line, you just stop. You see the third lane make hay for a second and they just die. So, they have to knock speed out of them with horsepower, and knock some drag out of them, I don’t know.
“They can’t just take all the drag out because then we’re going to go 220 mph, right? They’re in a box. I’m sure there are some really smart people trying to figure it out or maybe they’re happy with it. I don’t know.
“I finished third so I’m not that mad about it but it doesn't seem like you guys (the media) are happy with it, so I don’t know.”
Joey Logano was involved in the Lap 115 and is perpetually frustrated with this car on this style of race track.