Kyle Larson won the Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday, two months after his failed attempt at the Indy 500/Coke 600 double had broken his heart. It marked the conclusion of an unbelievable narrative. Some NASCAR fans believed the story was too fantastic to be true. Larson won the race in highly contentious fashion, prompting fans to speculate that NASCAR may have rigged the results in his favour.
Larson moved quickly all day. However, as the race came to a close, he found himself stranded behind both Brad Keselowski and Ryan Blaney. A late-race caution slowed the field and appeared to give Larson one last chance to win. Kyle Larson’s Brickyard 400 victory came in a highly controversial fashion.
Prior to the restart, Keselowski ran out of gasoline and pulled off the track, propelling Larson from third to first. Blaney, however, remained in second place and watched Larson take the lead on the preferred line when the race resumed. Shortly later, another wreck put the race back under caution and forced a second overtime.
“There’s no way they could have let that go green. “That is ridiculous,” Blaney stated on the radio. “They just gave it to him (Kyle Larson). It’s f—— over; I’m on top. I’m not going win from the top. I gave it to f—— golden boy. “Son of a b—-.”
But things would become even more contentious. As the race resumed, Larson moved away from Blaney on the preferred line, and pole-sitter Kyle Larson passed Blaney for second.
That’s when driver Ryan Preece spun out and crashed into the inside wall. A caution at the time would have resulted in another restart. Instead, NASCAR waited more than half a lap before issuing the caution flag. That allowed Larson to cross the finish line and see the white flag, effectively terminating the race.
Fans believed NASCAR altered the finish to ensure its desired winner. “What a f—— joke. @NASCAR completely orchestrated that finish; they knew Preece was dead on the back stretch and deliberately waited for Larson to grab the white flag before calling for caution. One fan tweeted, “F—— horrendous.” “It was rigged so Larson would win. NASCAR is complete rubbish. It should have been a warning, and it has been in the past much earlier. “It’s just nonsense,” stated another.
NASCAR competition director Elton Sawyer believed the series made the correct decision.
“Obviously, we’d like for it to happen naturally,” Sawyer remarked. “We want our teams to race to the checkered flag. We did everything we could. We kept an eye on number 41. He got turned around. He was putting in a lot of effort, and after he came to a stop and we realised he had, I believe, a flat left rear tyre, he wasn’t going anywhere. We had previously taken the white; we couldn’t go by there again. So it was unfortunate, but it was the correct decision.”
Fans, however, saw things differently. Larson gladly accepted the “Golden Boy” label.
What’s done is done. However, NASCAR still has a long way to go before regaining its fans’ trust.
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