Expect fuel mileage to once again be a prevailing topic at Watkins Glen
If NBC Sports wanted to bring back Metallica’s “Fuel” as its theme song for Sunday’s race at Watkins Glen, we would understand. We’d appreciate the nostalgia too. And given what happened on Sunday at Pocono and what’s likely to be the dominant storyline at Watkins Glen, it’d be incredibly appropriate.
The finish of the Windows 10 400 was unexpected. Teams stretched their fuel, thinking there would be a caution in the final quarter of the race. There wasn’t, and Matt Kenseth, who was fourth with three laps to go, won the race as Joey Logano, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. all ran out of fuel.
NASCAR has had a recent tendency to throw late race cautions. Sometimes those cautions are blatantly obvious. When cars crash, a yellow is mandatory. Other times, well, that’s when it gets tricky. Debris cautions can always be a source of conspiracy unless there’s a giant piece of sheetmetal visible in the middle of the track for all to see.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he was “absolutely” surprised to see the race go caution-free for the final 63 laps.
“Yeah, in the booth up there, they turned the clock back to 1973 and let that thing play out a little bit and let everybody run out of gas,” Junior said after the race. “That was pretty cool. It’s kind of like some of the older races where you just can’t count on them to throw them cautions there at the end. And they didn’t today.”
There were seven cautions in the first 72 laps at Pocono. It made sense to reason there would be another one before the race ended, which is why teams followed the lead of Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus, who started the cycle of pit stops on lap 123. The team ended up having to pit again, but finished sixth because of all the gas craziness.
38 laps of green flag racing at a 2.5 mile track is too much to ask for a full fuel tank, but with some caution laps it’s doable. Crew chiefs who brought their cars to pit road early were playing the probabilities. But as we know, history isn’t always indicative of future results.
“The statistics have said we’re going to have cautions for so many of these races that we’ve really kind of hedged our bet — kind of like the mortgage boom,” former crew chief and NBC Sports analyst Steve Letarte told Yahoo Sports. “We forgot what it was really all about and the economy collapsed. That’s how racing was.
“We all just assumed we were going to have four, five, six, eight, 10 yellows and then last week really made a big difference. Last week kind of put the exclamation point on we’re not always going to have these cautions and when the leaders started running out of gas I think that makes for an even more exciting Watkins Glen.”
Yes, that brings us to the upcoming race, where you’ll see a lot of the same types of strategy plays. Track position is vital at Watkins Glen and you can also pit there under green without losing a lap. Teams will be looking to save fuel from the start of the race to make their final pit stop as early as possible.
They’ll be banking on caution flags once again too. The last five races at Watkins Glen have all featured at least one caution flag in the last 20 laps and the 2014 and 2013 races have had three cautions in the final 20 laps. Letarte said that crew chiefs have to have short memories; despite the recency bias that is Pocono, expect some teams to make their final pit stop with the idea that they’ll need a caution or two to make it to the end of the race.
And if the race plays out like Pocono did and abnormally stays green, chaos could once again reign.
“If you only budget for green flag laps and a caution comes out you’ve been beat,” Letarte said. “Because there are a whole bunch of crew chiefs who are way more aggressive than that. So depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, there were times when I would — Las Vegas (in 2014) is the perfect example,” Letarte said of his calculated fuel gamble with Earnhardt Jr. that came up short as Junior was racing Brad Keselowski for the win. “We ran out of gas off turn two (on the last lap). We knew we were going to run out of gas on turn two. We had four yellows (in the entire race) … There was a caution about six laps after we pitted. If we had two more caution laps in the same caution. We win the race.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
