If what happened to the Hendrick Motorsports No. 17 happened to you, would you have received the same courtesy?
That was a question asked to numerous team executives in the O’Reilly Series garage on Saturday night at Naval Base Coronado. This was in response to NASCAR allowing Corey Day back on the lead lap after a loose sewer vent cover punctured his radiator on the opening lap.
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It took nearly an hour for NASCAR and the Navy to weld and secure all the manhole covers, with race control allowing Hendrick to continue working under the red flag, which is typically disallowed by the rule book.
Their work was completed around the same time that NASCAR lifted the red flag. At this point, series director Eric Peterson made the decision to allow Day to drive around the field four times to restart on the lead lap.
It was an unprecedented decision but also one that no one in the garage seemed to take exception to. Sam Hunt was the only one Motorsport.com asked on Saturday that remotely expressed skepticism.
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Would a Sam Hunt Racing car be allowed to work under red and rejoin the lead lap?
“Man, I don’t think so,” Hunt said. “I’ve never seen that before. I hated it for them. I would have hated that for anyone. Again, it’s a bad situation but I’ll spare you all the comments from our box and just tell you I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
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Alpha Prime Racing co-owner Tommy Joe Martins doesn’t think his cars would get the same courtesy either but ultimately endorsed it.
“I do not believe that owner Tommy Joe Martins probably gets the same concession as owner Rick Hendrick but at the same time, that was a really weird situation,” Martins said. “Even as a fellow competitor, I’m not mad about it. That was just a really weird thing that happened.
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“Obviously, I would hope that we would all get the same consideration.”
Jordan Anderson Racing’s eponymous owner thinks NASCAR would have let Jeb Burton, Andrew Patterson or Blaine Perkins have the same grace.
“I think so,” Anderson said. “I give NASCAR credit. They’re doing things different right now than maybe we did 10 or 20 years ago. Yeah, there was that thing with Jeff Gordon at Martinsville 20 years ago but we weren’t racing on a military base 20 years ago. We were racing at racetracks and this isn’t a racetrack. It happened to F1 at Las Vegas and that’s billionaire racing.
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“It’s a bad deal for whoever it happens to. I hate it for the fans and running those five laps under caution was the only grip I have to pick with it. We should have red flagged it but we were racing sundown too.
“I give Eric Peterson a lot of credit. I feel like he does a very good job of having the same conversations with the front end of the garage as the back end and making sure we’re all treated fairly. So yes, if that had been one of our cars, I do think we get the same opportunity.”
Ultimately, NASCAR conceded that the damage was their fault or responsibility, and with it being the first lap had a chance to unwind it. Sheldon Creed of Haas Factory Team expects to race Day for a championship this autumn alongside Justin Allgaier of JR Motorsports but didn’t have a problem with the decision either.
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“I’d want the same grace shown to me if that happened on lap one at a place like this,” Creed said. “So, it didn’t bother me at all. I don’t have a problem with it.”
Joe Gibbs Racing’s O’Reilly Series program manager, Steve de Souza, also echoed a similar sentiment.
“Initially, you’re thinking, man, with the software, you should be able to easily delete the laps but then you have to consider tire wear and fuel so I do think waving him around four times was the right thing to do,” de Souza said. “It was probably odd for a fan in the stands, and we have a lot of new ones here this weekend, trying to understand what was happening without TV but aside from that, we’ve all been there before.
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“As a competitor, we’ve had situations where we wished NASCAR could make that right, and this was probably the right thing to do, even if it looked odd in presentation.”
When asked about it, future Hall of Fame crew chief Rodney Childers, now at the JR Motorsports No. 1 team, also supported the decision.
“We should have just parked in one spot and let him drive around and get his laps back,” Childers said with a laugh. “But really, all in all, I think they did a good job. I mean, this is a learning experience for all of us.
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“Some of the walls that moved shouldn’t have. There are things we could have done a little bit better but compare Chicago from the first year to last year. We figured it out and the rain was our only issue.
“When that happened to the 17, I was like, ‘that’s not fair.’ I thought they needed to let them have a chance to race. It was a ton of work for them to get that backup car ready after last week and for them to have only run half a lap would have been disappointing.
“I don’t have a problem with it, and not because Adam (Wall, crew chief) sits in on our competition meetings. It was just the right thing to do and I think you’re asking me because you know I am going to tell you the truth. This was the right thing to do.”
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Ultimately, Anderson even wishes this wasn’t a story because he would rather talk about the event holistically instead of this particular topic.
“We have been treated like Cup teams by the fans this weekend,” Anderson said. “This whole deal has been a hit. This made me really feel like a NASCAR fan again, seeing all the people here.
“We need to be doing stuff like this and putting our sport in front of a lot of people. They had us on pit road for 30 minutes after the race and brought fans from the stands to see the cars today. There was a seven-year-old kid that we probably made a fan for life today.”
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Anderson said this reminded him of a childhood spent in dirt racing where the pit area gets opened up afterwards.
“I love this,” Anderson said. “This is cool. It was a lot of carnage and a lot of chaos but we had all three cars in the top-20 and I would love to come back here or do more stuff like this — new markets and different fans
“Let’s do this. Let’s take a race to Hickory Motor Speedway. I wish Myrtle Beach was still around. I’m a sucker for the historic places but also creating new history. We just have growing pains with it.”
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