Denny Hamlin reacts to controversial caution length in final stage at Las Vegas

William Byron crashed into the back of Ty Dillon on Lap 237 of Sunday’s Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The race did not resume until eight laps later.

NASCAR had the option to put the race under red flag if they wanted to, but they decided against it. Instead, precious final laps were completed under caution. Denny Hamlin took issue with that.

“We ran forever under yellow,” Hamlin said on Monday’s Actions Detrimental podcast. “And it’s not like for no reason, the track was a mess, but usually if it gets down to the end of the race and the track is that destroyed with the all the debris and it had so much debris all over it, running 12 to 15 laps or something under caution is way too much. Just red flag the thing.”

On the ensuing restart, another caution came out after contact between Ty Gibbs and Shane van Gisbergen. Just like that, the race was back under yellow before restarting for the final time with 15 laps to go.

Hamlin was panicking inside his race car. He was back in sixth and concerned he wouldn’t have enough time to get to the front. Hamlin did, winning his 60th career Cup Series race.

“It gives a lifeline to the two tires guys, for sure,” Hamlin said. “You’re keeping your spot and laps are clicking off, but it just seemed like too long of a caution. We were not gonna be racing no matter what because it was gonna take some amount of time to clean it up but certainly would have loved to have seen a red there. It made me panic a little bit that yeah, I’m hoping to just get back into the top five.”

NASCAR executive addresses caution length at Las Vegas

Brad Moran, NASCAR Cup Series managing director, was asked Tuesday about the possibility of issuing the red flag for the Byron-Dillon wreck. He explained why there was no need to red flag the race in that moment.

“There was [conversation], but it was debris. There were no fluids on the track,” Moran said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “We would have gotten pit road open a couple laps earlier but the 88 got a piece of that and he was in on pit road and whatever happened, they had a mechanical [issue] where they couldn’t repair the car and get it back to the DVP area. So, we had a tow truck on pit road that extended it two laps.

“We would have preferred not to, but it ended up being an eight-lap caution which is not extremely high. If there would have been fluids down, probably would have gotten red-flagged immediately.”