The NASCAR championship weekend had some wild fallouts. After Corey Heim smoothly fetched his Craftsman Truck Series championship, things got bumpy for the Xfinity and Cup favorites. 10-time Xfinity race winner Connor Zilisch could not finish the job. Jesse Love defeated him due to a fast car. However, the puzzling factor is that neither Denny Hamlin could, even though he also had the fastest Cup Series car.

Fans and experts have speculated about the possible reasons for these results. In Denny Hamlin’s case, the tire strategy on the final caution of the Phoenix race seemed like the turning point. However, Bubba Wallace’s spotter pointed at the NASCAR rule allowing for the mishap instead.

The system doomed Denny Hamlin again

Denny Hamlin was leading with four laps to go at Phoenix Raceway when William Byron brought out the final caution. That sent the race into overtime, and a green-white-checkered finish. And it’s what Freddie Kraft, Bubba Wallace’s spotter, deemed the problem to be. “We’re doing this stuff because we want to act like stick and ball sports…When have you ever seen a Super Bowl where they got a 30-point lead in the 4th quarter and then the next score wins, and we just go to overtime? Get rid of green white checkers. I’ve said that on here for years. I feel nothing good has come of these except for wrecks on restarts and stupid s— like that.”

NASCAR implemented Green-White Checkered finishes in the Cup Series in 2004. It was originally a two-lap attempt at finishing a race beyond the scheduled distance, which was changed to three attempts in 2010 and expanded to unlimited attempts from 2017 onwards. That means there can be an unlimited number of overtime periods in a race. This rule caused an uproar in Nashville last year, when the Cup Series entered a quintuple overtime race. Although that scenario didn’t repeat itself last weekend, the rule still affected the championship results.

During the Xfinity finale, Justin Allgaier took the green-and-white checkered with Connor Zilisch close behind. But both JR Motorsports drivers faded away as Jesse Love sped up. Then, in the Cup Series, the green-white-checkered finish saw Denny Hamlin drop from the lead to 10th. Freddie Kraft continued, “You can’t be mad that Jesse Love won and mad that Denny lost. Because they’re the same scenario. Neither one of them would have won the full-season format. Jesse was 200 points behind Connor, Denny was like 90 behind whoever was leading…But you can’t be mad that Jesse brought a really fast race car and then be upset that Denny brought a really fast race car and didn’t win.” 

Freddie Kraft pointed at the green-white checkered finish as the culprit for Denny Hamlin’s heartbreak. However, most in the NASCAR garage, including veterans like Kevin Harvick and Richard Petty, have blamed NASCAR’s one-race championship format. Petty quipped about Hamlin’s four-tire call, “The Cup people spend that much money to run a race, and then they don’t let them have it for just a few tires? I mean, this guy spent 15 or 20 million dollars to put the car on the racetrack. He’s handicapped because he’s not got enough tires.”

And this debate is going to rage for some time, considering Denny Hamlin’s big efforts.

A moment that stung more at the end

A month ago, Denny Hamlin was okay with losing the championship. “I’ve had a season that far exceeded what I thought it would,” he said shortly after winning in Las Vegas. However, his hopes and ambitions became stronger in the next month. The long-elusive title seemed right at the tip of his fingers. So he invested all his time and effort into it, hoping to deliver that championship to his ailing father. “At Phoenix, I changed my driving style and changed my habits… I went to bed with halos in my eyes after looking at screens and data… I feel like there’s so much freed-up time that it was taking up, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said.

That is why when it did not work out due to an overtime caution, it stung terribly. Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was “40 seconds from a championship.” And Hamlin confessed to struggling to control his emotions. “When I walk into the bus and see my mom, and give her a hug the first time, she’s just essentially the same as I was post-race. She was in shock as well, but was like, ‘it wasn’t meant to be, ’” Hamlin said. “If they have strong emotions one way or another, that funnels into me, but they do a good job of being pretty level…I saw they didn’t let it bother them too much, so I modeled myself after them for my kids.”

Denny Hamlin’s gut-wrenching heartbreak has left a lasting impact on the NASCAR community. Let’s wait and see if this impact reaches the upper echelons of NASCAR as well.