With less than 40 laps to go in Sunday’s GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, a group of seven Toyotas made their way to pit road.
Outnumbered by Chevrolets (16 cars) and Fords (14), Toyota crafted a plan to come all at once during Stage 3 at a point where their rival manufacturers were in fuel saving mode. Though they were collectively separated from the pack, they were now able to run full throttle for the remainder of the race should it stay green to the end. And if a caution came out, all of the Chevrolets and Fords would have to pit, giving the Toyotas valuable track position.
In theory, it was a well-crafted plan — until it wasn’t. On Lap 157, five laps after all seven cars pitted, John Hunter Nemechek got into the back of Bubba Wallace who then nudged Erik Jones. Jones went head-on into the outside wall in Turn 3 in a violent crash which collected Wallace and Denny Hamlin.
As Denny Hamlin put it on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast, the plan was “gonna pan out great” until the group got stacked up in Turn 3.
“Instead of running half throttle, we decided to pit,” Hamlin said. “Then we came out of pit road and said, ‘Now let’s run wide open.’ And look at our lap times versus the field and it was gonna work out quite nicely. They were still saving fuel. Now, they would have adjusted their strategy for certain, but it was gonna work out nice to where once everyone else pitted, it would have been too late. We would have been in front, we would’ve cycled in front of them.”
Tyler Reddick takes checkered flag at Talladega for 23XI Racing, Toyota
The crash ended Jones, Nemechek and Hamlin’s race, however, it did help out Tyler Reddick. Reddick, not involved in the wreck, cycled to the front on the ensuing restart. He went onto win the race after race-leader Michael McDowell hit the wall on the front straightaway trying to block Brad Keselowski as the two approached the checkered line. Reddick kept it in full throttle and drove past Keselowski for the win.
So, in a way, the plan worked?
“We all decided we were gonna pit because we were in our fuel window, and we were just gonna see how it all panned out. Up until we crashed, it was gonna pan out great,” Hamlin said. “But it still did because any caution that comes out from the time that we pit until others pit, we’re good on fuel. We don’t need to pit.
“… While it was a fail from my perspective, it was a win for Toyota because any caution that happens from the time that we pit to when the peloton pits, is gonna be good for us because we cycle to the front. And that’s what happened with the 45 [Reddick], the 19 [Martin Truex Jr.] and others.”
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