By: Ashley McCubbin

As of the 398th lap of the Toyota Owners 400, there was not much to talk about as the NextGen short track package struck again without much to talk about. However, simple contact and a late race restart and there is a lot of things being discussed tonight.

Martin Truex Jr. just needed to put two more solid laps together, and he would have had the trophy in hand on Easter Sunday at Richmond Raceway. However, a caution came out for Bubba Wallace sending Kyle Larson through the infield grass.

Larson, for his part, kept it off the inside wall and was able to get back on-track with just losing a few positions in the process. You could even debate whether the yellow flag was necessary, but typically a car sliding through the front stretch warrants a need for concern. That all worked out in the end, as Larson still scored a top-five, while Wallace’s crew slipped up on pit road to bounce him outside the top-15. As Wallace mentioned in his conversation with Larson post-race, karma quickly took care of things.

The first mistake for Truex and his team was losing the battle off pit road, giving Denny Hamlin the inside and opportunity to be the control car for the restart. Everything that followed would not had happened without the first sequence of events.

The debate then begins – did Hamlin jump the restart? The angle shown by NASCAR on Fox shows he may have started rolling early, but remained alongside Truex until they were inside the zone. The sanctioning body also deemed it as not being under review. Honestly, it’s a common trick used at any local track on Saturday night to try and gain the upper hand. Sometimes you get caught by the flag man if he is watching close enough, and other times you get away with it. Hamlin got away with it this time.

However, for a sanctioning body that used camera technology to see if drivers were abusing “track limits” at Circuit of the Americas, and uses replays to monitor issues on pit road, one has to wonder why SMT data was not utilized in this situation. They could have timed the exact location of the launch for Hamlin, and went from there. If you are going to heavy police in other cases, why are you not staying standard across the board in doing the same thing?

For the record, Hamlin was able to snag the advantage and cruise to the win, while Truex ultimately faded to fourth at the checkered after being passed by Joey Logano and Larson. Truex was not one bit happy, reasonably so, and showed it in how he battled Larson for third as well as a post-race love tap for Hamlin. Cue the conversation about teammate ethics and how the Monday morning conversation will go at Joe Gibbs Racing.

Now if you go back to Lap 398 and none of this happens, what is there left to talk about from the night? Strategy may have became a conversation, but NASCAR threw that out of the window with a questionable debris caution during the round of pit stops that cost several drivers dearly. Other than that, it was like a train was going around the track, with passes difficult to make and space between cars unable to be made up as a result of dirty air.

Hopefully Martinsville Speedway brings a conversation of its own….