{"id":27443,"date":"2016-05-23T10:30:37","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T17:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=27443"},"modified":"2016-05-23T10:30:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T17:30:37","slug":"all-star-mayhem-at-charlotte-motor-speedway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/all-star-mayhem-at-charlotte-motor-speedway\/","title":{"rendered":"All-Star Mayhem at Charlotte Motor Speedway"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NASCAR<\/a><\/p>\n

With a million dollars up for the taking under a Carolina full moon, the first question everyone was asking in Saturday night\u2019s NASCAR Sprint All-Star race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway was \u2018What\u2019s going on in the race?\u2019.<\/p>\n

Teams only had a brief practice session for the race and, despite the deluge of rain that delayed the start of the celebrated All-Star race, the inclement weather finally moved out with clear skies prevailing at sundown.\u00a0 The green flag waved at 10:11 p.m., but a dark cloud of suspicion quickly surfaced after the first 50-lap segment and still hovered around about how it would affect the outcome directly.<\/p>\n

The turning point of the race happened right at the end of the first portion when then leader, Matt Kenseth, failed to pit under the green conditions because of Jamie McMurray\u2019s spin with four laps to go, catching six other cars a lap down.\u00a0 Then his Joe Gibbs Racing team was\u00a0penalized by NASCAR officials a lap for not pitting in the first 50-lap segment.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t a provision to correct the unexpected lapped cars if such a mishap of the rules occurred.<\/p>\n

What brought on the head scratching was clarification of those rules.\u00a0 As a result, Martin Truex, Jr., Tony Stewart, Jamie McMurray, Chase Elliott, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Danica Patrick including Kenseth in 20th<\/sup> were all a down a lap.<\/p>\n

Now brought about the question, where should those lap cars line up on the restart?\u00a0 Some of those cars were ahead of the leader and they can\u2019t take the wave around because they pitted instead of staying out to get back on the lead lap.\u00a0 It was the rule.\u00a0 All teams had to pit under green during the first break for at least two tires.\u00a0 That was confusing to say the least for the teams, the fans and the FOX TV audience with some of the cars lined up in the right place but just not on the lead lap.<\/p>\n

\"NASCAR<\/a><\/p>\n

Drivers were just as baffled.\u00a0 Now everyone fully understood about a green flag pit stop with the pits closing with three laps from the finish of that sector. \u00a0It was just when the caution came out with four to go; Kenseth had to accept his punishment for not pitting.\u00a0 Crew chiefs interpreted the rules as though a red flag would come out and the No. 20 would get a chance to pit within the guidelines.\u00a0 Everyone found out quickly, the rules are the Sprint All-Star rules with NASCAR finding themselves in scenarios even they probably weren\u2019t expecting.<\/p>\n

In the end, Joey Logano snared the $1 Million prize from Sprint by saving his equipment for the end with Brad Keselowski right behind him, making it an all-Team Penske win on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a point I came over the radio where I said, I don’t really want to know what’s going on, let me drive the car and you call the race because I was confused,\u201d said first time All-Star victor, Logano.\u00a0 \u201cAll I know is if there’s a car in front of me, I probably should pass him, and that’s kind of where my head was.\u00a0 It doesn’t have to be as complicated as you think it is.\u00a0 Sometimes the simple life is a little easier inside the race car.\u00a0 I had my hands full with enough things, so I was able to focus in on my job; Todd was able to focus in on his job.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut obviously the whole falling back and trying to position yourself in the front didn’t really play out because there were only two, three cars that were on old tires in front of you.\u00a0 We got through them in the first corner, and then it was like, all right, it’s Larson and I for this thing. \u00a0I felt confident that we had a very good shot at racing for the win when we were restarting there at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

The field inverted the first 11 positions after honorary pace car driver, Carolina Panthers tight end, Greg Olsen selected the number, seeing drivers like Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch fading to the back to end up front on the 13-lap shootout.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for the teams with fresh tires head to the front, appearing that Kyle Larson was going to be the big surprise winner.\u00a0 He had already battled with Chase Elliott earlier in the day in a fender-locking, tire smoking brawl to win the Sprint Open.\u00a0 Larson was in familiar territory, preferring the high groove going into turn one with two laps to go in an attempt to side draft against Logano when suddenly his Chevy slipped up, careening off the wall and sending Larson to the sidelines in another hard luck loss after driving the wheels off his No. 42 to get himself that far.<\/p>\n

“I was able to get to the front pretty quick there and be in the best position for that last restart,” Larson said. \u00a0“I got clear right away and thought I could cruise, but I got looser throughout the race\u2014we were making adjustments, but I guess we weren\u2019t making big enough ones.<\/p>\n

“I just got loose, and Joey caught me, and he did a really good job of side-drafting me. \u00a0I tried to hang on his quarter, and I just got really loose as soon as I got down in the corner. \u00a0We were going so fast I couldn\u2019t correct it and drilled the wall.”<\/p>\n

\"NASCAR<\/a><\/p>\n

After Larson, who finished 16th<\/sup>, was ambling around with his crippled racer, it allowed Keselowski to get back around for second followed by Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Carl Edwards, and in fifth, Kurt Busch.<\/p>\n

Keselowski inspired the All-Star format, lending his knowledge to the process and was relatively happy with the outcome with the desire results.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, there was a last — or next to last lap pass for the lead,” said Keselowski.\u00a0 There were several passes for the lead. \u00a0The last four races, there hasn’t been a pass for the lead in the last 20 or 30 laps. \u00a0I think our fans deserve a better format than that, and they got that today.\u00a0 I don’t know how you can get much more compelling racing than what we saw today, so they need to get unconfused and enjoy the racing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dale Jr. stayed out of trouble and despite all the disarray with the rules was happy to be in third at the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was pretty confused right up until it was 13 laps to go, and then I knew, well, we’re racing from here to the end, and this is all the normal rules,\u201d said Earnhardt.\u00a0 \u201cBut everything before that was really out of my element.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut NASCAR did a good job making sure — even though all the pitting was confusing and how the lap cars were pitting with the leaders, people weren’t really where they were supposed to be.\u00a0 NASCAR did make sure all the lineups were correct before we went back to green.\u00a0 So you can’t really complain about that too much.\u00a0 It was just an unorthodox way of doing it.\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 I think they ran into some scenarios tonight that they didn’t really anticipate and were caught off guard.\u00a0 I think the 20 obviously not pitting threw them for a loop and everybody was confused from that minute on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Confusing rule enforcement didn’t stop the NASCAR Sprint All-Star race from giving fans a good show.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":27447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,3424,3470,22],"tags":[3053,3116,3109,1434,3054,1873,3186,1529,2844,682,683,2849,3115,4507,1192],"class_list":["post-27443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-column","category-nascar","category-news","category-event-coverage","tag-brad-keselowski","tag-carl-edwards","tag-chase-elliott","tag-dale-earnhardt-jr","tag-danica-patrick","tag-jamie-mcmurray","tag-jimmie-johnson","tag-joey-logano","tag-kurt-busch","tag-kyle-busch","tag-kyle-larson","tag-martin-truex-jr","tag-matt-kenseth","tag-nascar-sprint-all-star-race","tag-tony-stewart"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/featuredimage5.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-78D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27448,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27443\/revisions\/27448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}