MARTINSVILLE, Va. — William Byron leaned against his car on pit road, his championship hopes no longer in his hands, and waited for NASCAR officials to make a decision.
“This is crazy,” he said.
In a season punctuated by finishes in thousandths of a second, the wait Sunday night stretched nearly 30 minutes after the checkered flag waved at Martinsville Speedway.
Winner Ryan Blaney celebrated on the frontstretch, oblivious to the drama unfolding in the NASCAR tower and the tension rising on pit road. Byron and Christopher Bell stood by their cars waiting to see who would race for a Cup championship this coming weekend at Phoenix Raceway and who would not.
Never has Martinsville Speedway — which held its first race in 1947 — seen anything like this.
There was nothing to do but wait in a sport that doesn’t stand still.
“This is weird,” Bell told NBC Sports. “This is weird. Everyone is standing around. Nobody knows what’s going on.”
Finally, the decision came. Bell was out for riding against the wall on the final lap. Byron would get the final spot in the Championship 4.
When told by NBC Sports’ Kim Coon that he was in and Bell was eliminated, Byron shook his head.
“Serious?”
The crowd’s cheers — and some boos — confirmed the decision seconds later when it was announced.
“That’s crazy,” Byron said.
Bell was stunned.
“I don’t know what to say,” he told NBC Sports. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to say.”
The night was not over for some, though.
Team owners Joe Gibbs and Heather Gibbs, Bell’s crew chief, Adam Stevens, and other JGR executives waited outside the NASCAR hauler to speak with series officials.
Eventually, they were let in. About 15 minutes later, Joe Gibbs exited the hauler. He walked away, his head down, and spoke softly.
“They said it’s over,” he relayed.
There would be no appeal for Bell because there could not be. It was a race violation that is not subject to appeal, Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, later said.
NASCAR penalized Bell after he drifted up to the wall in Turn 3 on the final lap and rode along it through Turn 4, similar to what Ross Chastain did in 2022 to make the title race with his “Hail Melon” move.
NASCAR outlawed that move before the 2023 season, citing the maneuver as a safety issue. Sawyer said officials spent their time after Sunday’s race examining the infraction and then deciding how to react.
While Bell finished a lap down in 18th, NASCAR penalized him by dropping him to last among the cars a lap down. That put him 22nd. The four points he lost allowed Byron to break the tie and advance.
Meanwhile, questions emerged about Bubba Wallace’s Toyota slowing on the final lap. Bell, a Toyota teammate, passed him to gain the spot and the point he needed to seemingly advance. Wallace told reporters: “I went loose or something broke and was nursing it. … Just trying to bide our time and not crash and bring out a caution and jumble up the whole field.”
Questions also emerged about how Austin Dillon and Ross Chastain raced Byron, a fellow Chevrolet driver, in the final laps. Neither passed Byron. Audio transmission from both teams played on NBC’s broadcast showed that the drivers were made aware of Byron’s tenuous hold on the final transfer spot.
Sawyer said NASCAR did not focus on either issue immediately after the race. But there will be much for officials to discuss this week.
“We’ll look at everything,” Sawyer said. “As I said earlier, we want to go back, as we would have done anyway. We’ll get back, we’ll take all the data, video. We’ll listen to in-car audio. We’ll do all that, as we would any event.”
That wasn’t a concern for Blaney, as he basked in winning this race for the second year in a row. He followed last year’s Martinsville victory by claiming his first championship a week later at Phoenix.
Blaney got a little time to celebrate before focusing on racing for another title.
But there was one thing on his mind Sunday night.
“I have a question,” Blaney said to reporters. “What happened at the end of the race? I have no idea. I have no clue what happened.
“People came up to me in Victory Lane and someone asked me. They said, ‘Hey, how about that?’ I have no clue what happened.”
For nearly 30 minutes after the race, no one on pit road knew what would happen.
When NASCAR’s decision came, there was little celebrating.
“I don’t know how to feel,” Byron said.
