I have some family members that are huge fans, so I follow somewhat. It should be noted with your link that Darlington is a much faster and lengthier track than Martinsville. At Darlington, Larson was very close to Hamlin when he initiated the wall ride halfway through the corner - he may have gained a half second or so, not several, like at Martinsville. I see this as more of a Richmond/Martinsville short track strategy. So now that we know it's possible at Martinsville, it'll be great to see what happens next time they visit or on the next short track race.

I personally don't see this happening a lot. I raced motorcycles at the professional level for several years. If someone had continued doing something that gave them a 3 to 5 second advantage on the last lap, the rest of the paddock would have gotten tired of it pretty quickly. Although I think it's a hilarious situation, I would imagine if it continues to happen that the drivers doing it will start to feel pressure from the other drivers.

If it gets to where this is happening all the time, I don't see the series not making a rule against it, but they are probably gladly accepting the needed publicity at this point.

I think you’ll see the defensive line move up the track to block this on exit, which will open up the possibility for someone to get under the defending car, which should make the racing tactics more interesting in the last lap.

This tactic will wear the car out far too much to be used on multiple laps, so it may just get race fans to experience more excitement and interest on the last lap.

Sure, but a driver isn't blocking the guys right behind them. Someone isn't going to win the race from 10 cars back, but anyone three seconds behind the leader can pull it off. From what I saw, a driver would easily be able to pass the driver one to three cars in front. So blocking the outside on exit might work for the guy coming from 5 to 10 spots back, but the leader will lose every time to the guys directly behind. And if the driver directly in front goes to the outside on entry to block, then a dive bomb from the person behind on the inside will work just fine too. I'm not sure why anyone should take the regular line at that point. What's stopping every car in the top 10 from going around the outside bouncing off the wall, especially when there is money on the line?

At the moment I'm looking forward to the last corner/last lap of one of these short track races with a lot of money or championship at stake. I picture it playing out exactly like the first corner in a Forza online multiplayer race. One or two players staying in the race line, two other drivers dive bombing, four others bouncing off the wall on the outside, resulting in a mess of fiberglass, tears, and mad drivers. I just hope a fan in the stands doesn't catch a loose part.

> What's stopping every car in the top 10 from going around the outside bouncing off the wall, especially when there is money on the line?

Nothing at all. Everyone will end up doing it on the last half lap at short tracks and no one will have an advantage, lots of cars will get torn up, and owners will ask NASCAR to stop making them tear up a $250K racecar every short track race.

Yep, you are spot on there.

I also wonder when someone who might normally qualify at the end of the field will do this in qualifying, essentially trading extra repair work on the car for a spot at the front of the field.

Interestingly, this weekend's wall ride had a similar result - a car ahead stayed high, forcing him to slow down and preventing the pass. The difference is that in this case, he had already passed five cars, and passing the sixth was irrelevant in the standings result.

There was the 3" fuel line issue a decade or more ago.

When limiting the size of the fuel cell to x gallons, they neglected to specify the size of the fuel line. More fuel capacity is an advantage late in the race, allowing for the potential to not have to pit for a splash of gas or have to drive as conservatively.

Well, a 3" line has a couple of gallon capacity if it extends the length of the car, and at one point, someone won because of it, and then had it discovered in the technical inspection.

You're thinking of Smokey Yunick, and that's just a taste of his antics

Check out the "reverse torque special" where he reversed the direction of his engine, so the tq pull would naturally turn him in the correct direction for nascar

Or when he modified the roof and raised the floor to get a more aerodynamic car

Or when he qualified with wheel covers, and cut them out before the race ( rules didn't stipulate you had to cut them before qualifying )

The guy was a legend, and I think racing would be much more interesting if we had more of him

Or placed an inflated basketball in the fuel tank when it was going to be measured for capacity, only to deflate the basketball for the race.

Or load the car with cold (more dense) fuel.

Or (allegedly) race a 15/16ths scale car with a matching 15/16ths scale street car strategically parked in the track parking lot so the scrutineers could compare against a stock car and see that it matched.

Or built a race engine with the correct size cylinder in the easiest to measure location and oversized cylinders in every other position.

Other racers had special lead-filled radios and overweight helmets that would be in the car for tech, then get changed out before qualifying. Or lead shot filled in the frame rails and a wax seal or threaded fitting to keep it in. Darrell Waltrip tells a hilarious story where the threaded seal was in the jack point and NASCAR jacked the car to go look for it. Moving bars of Mallory (tungsten, basically) from the right to left after passing tech. Another racer was caught with a 22 gallon tank (20 was the limit at the time), apologized and agreed to change it. (He changed it to a 28 gallon tank.)

> Or load the car with cold (more dense) fuel.

This is why F1 specifies fuel capacities and flow rates in kilograms.

Definitely a Smokey Yunick special there. That whole idea is so iconic / infamous in racing that it's directly referenced in the movie Days of Thunder in a scene where Harry Hogge is talking to the car he's started building and says something like "I'm going to give you a fuel line that will hold an extra gallon of fuel".

They didn't mention Smokey by name, but it was clearly an allusion to that.

Coincidentally, Denny Hamlin was the target of the move both this past weekend and in the linked article above.