Denny Hamlin reveals ‘unscientific’ flaw in design of NASCAR timing devices after Kansas photo finish

Denny Hamlin hasn’t been tight-lipped regarding his feelings on last weekend’s legendary finish between Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher at Kansas Speedway.

Evidently, Hamlin believes NASCAR needs better technology to score these races, and that becomes more clear when we have instances like the ending on Sunday. During the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin used some pretty salient points to make his argument.

“They should fix that, for sure,” Hamlin said, regarding the scoring pylon saying Buescher won as they crossed the start-finish-line. “I hate to pick apart anything, because you know, we always want to try to make things better. But where they score the cars is in the back of the car, okay? But where it actually runs over the timing lines, it’s only like three-feet before the start-finish-line. But the actual transponder, is probably 12-feet behind the nose of the car. So the timing line needs to be moved back, to where it coincides, where when your nose crosses, whatever line it is, because apparently lines are very unofficial. It like, they need to have it to where it crosses, your transponder crosses your mark to time you, when your nose is hitting the start-finish-line.

“So right now where it’s at, is that if the transponder clips it, but your nose is probably six-feet past the start-finish-line. So it’s very unscientific where they have it right now, for sure.”

That comment coincides with Hamlin’s claim that NASCAR simply made up the margin of victory for Larson, as he believes the No. 5 and the No. 17 might’ve finished in a dead-tie, unwilling to trust the photo produced by the governing body.

“I almost feel like the 0.001 is just a made up number at this point,” Hamlin exclaimed. “Like, how can they say it’s 0.001, if the electronics say the other way around? [It showed 0.000] on my bus, as well. I have timing and scoring in my bus, right by my couch, so I can kind of watch races and watch lap times, and pay attention to some things. It said triple zeros on mine, as well. That’s what I’m saying. I think it’s just made up. … You can’t tell time by a by a single photo. You can’t. 

“You see an inch, but you don’t know. You can’t quantify that. That’s why I’m saying — if timing and scoring showed triple zeros, as a tie, like I think they just add the one on the end, just to say it was closer. Because they can’t say it’s triple zeros, because then people would say, ‘We got a tie then, it’s a tie.’ … It was pretty close to it, for sure.”

Perhaps NASCAR does need to take a long, hard look at the way races are scored. Denny Hamlin is vocalizing his concerns, but there’s sure to be a bevy of other drivers, fans and media members who feel the same moving forward after Kansas.