Luck helps out Hamlin in end (Yahoo! Sports)
March 29, 2010
Denny Hamlin deserved to win the Goody’s 500, but ultimately he needed good fortune to do it. More and more, this is how NASCAR races are being decided – with good luck trumping solid performance.
For most of Monday’s race at Martinsville Speedway, Hamlin had the field covered. He led 172 of the 500 laps, and in the waning moments his only real challenger, Jeff Burton, was fading because of a flat tire.
But when Burton’s tire finally gave way bringing out a caution with just nine laps to go, Hamlin and his crew were forced to make a decision – pit or stay out. No matter what they chose, they knew the rest of the field would do the opposite, which is exactly what happened. Hamlin decided to pit and only teammate Kyle Busch joined him.
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When the race restarted five laps later, Jeff Gordon held the lead, with Hamlin stuck back in ninth – way too far back to rally in such a short amount of time. Three laps minus 100 feet later, Gordon still held the lead when Busch spun into the wall, bringing out another caution.
Had the yellow flag been displayed a few seconds later (after Gordon had crossed the start/finish line making it one to go) the race would have been over, with Gordon lucking into the win. But it didn’t, and so per NASCAR’s green-white-checkered rule, the field lined up for a two-lap sprint to the finish.
Put another way, it was a reprieve for Hamlin, who restarted fourth and needed less than a single half-mile lap to bully his way past Gordon and Matt Kenseth (both skating on old tires) and into the lead.
So to recap, on Lap 490, Hamlin had the win in his hands. On Lap 491, Hamlin’s chances at victory were somewhere between slim and none. On Lap 492, Jeff Gordon became the clear favorite and remained so until Lap 498¾ … at which point Hamlin was reinserted into the conversation.
There’s really not a question as to why this is. NASCAR has done such an amazing job at leveling the playing field that the difference between winning and losing is measured by 10ths of seconds. The trade off is that by governing the sport so tightly that a good chunk of the field sticks around right to the end, the odds are increased that luck and/or good fortune will play into the outcome.
We saw this same thing happen just last week at Bristol, only in reverse, when a late caution ended up costing Kurt Busch (who led 278 laps) the victory. Late cautions and/or late pit strategy had a hand in two other races this season, meaning that four of the six races run this season have been decided, in some form, by chance.
“If I had to put a percentage on it, no matter what we do at the end of this race, whether we pit or don’t pit, it was going to be about a 20 percent chance we win this race,” Hamlin said afterward. “Things were going to have to happen. Not only that 20 percent, everything had to happen the way they did with us taking tires.”
As they say in the biz, “That’s racin’.”
But is this really what comes to mind when considering what competition is about – that the more deserving player/team has a 20 percent chance of winning?
This certainly isn’t always the case in NASCAR. If it were, Jimmie Johnson wouldn’t be a four-time defending champ. But there’s no denying that chance is becoming a more frequent determiner of who wins and who loses.
Monday, the right driver won, but he essentially needed to win the lottery to do so, and somehow that just doesn’t seem right.
Jay Hart is the NASCAR editor for Yahoo! Sports. Send Jay a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
