Denny Hamlin questions accuracy of NASCAR broadcast fuel tracking after William Byron saving win at Iowa

William Byron last pitted on Lap 206 in this past Sunday’s race at Iowa Speedway. He saved enough over the next 144 laps to take the checkered flag.

It sure felt like Byron could run out at any moment in the closing laps, as NBC was tracking his fuel situation and had him cutting it close to the finish. What helped Byron, however, was that about a third of the final 150 laps were under caution. Still, it was impressive that he made it without running out. Though TV might have led viewers to believe he wouldn’t make it, Denny Hamlin said it’s possible that the broadcast wasn’t correctly calculating Byron’s fuel situation.

“I don’t know how they’re calculating that. I think that Prime had a proprietary AI Burn Bar,” Hamlin said on his Actions Detrimental podcast. “The difference is, I’m wondering are they assuming everyone is filling their tank up full every time because they’re not. So, when they’re trying to calculate on TV and tell you how much fuel each car has, are they assuming that they went in for a pit stop, so their tank is full now? That’s not the case. They need to figure it off the amount of seconds they were on pit road, not just a pit stop.

“Let’s just say that a normal pit stop is nine seconds — if your car is empty, you can’t get your car all the way full on a nine-second pit stop. You’ve got to wait till 12 to 13 seconds. Now, on a short track like this, not many cars ran their tank dry, so more than likely they could get their car full on a nine-second pit stop.”

Hamlin added that it’s a giant guessing game. Some teams are better than others — the 24 team was dialed in on Sunday.

William Byron reveals reality of fuel situation after saving win at Iowa

“I don’t think they’re calculating how much the driver is saving,” Hamlin said. “I think they could be — again, unless they have AI running it to where it’s calculating how much fuel the driver is burning, not counting a lap at four miles a gallon, well, the driver can run you a lap that gets you six miles of a gallon sometimes. That’s the balance is how fast can you run and save the most gas. So, I don’t know about their proprietary information and whether they’re using a flat number or not.

“Obviously, with [crew chief] Rudy [Fugle] telling Byron, ‘Save more, save more, save more,’ Rudy can see how much fuel Byron is burning. I don’t know that TV can see that. … There’s not an exact science to it. There is, but these teams are constantly evolving how they are figuring this out live. Some programs are better than others and TV has its own program apparently. We’re all guessing.”

Byron had been here before. He had run out of fuel twice this season. Determined not to make it three, Byron said his team had been honing in on getting it right.

“It’s definitely a razor’s edge that we all are kind of on,” William Byron said on the Dale Jr. Download. “I think a lot of it has to do with tire fall-off. This week, there wasn’t a lot of fall-off. We knew that in practice. We were going faster as we ran, basically, especially Group 1. Took about 20 laps to get their quickest lap and for the track to kind of clean up.

“We knew there was probably maybe a half second of fall-off in the tire, so that was really a lot of the strategy. And then I mean, yeah, as far as the fuel goes, yeah, it’s a razor-thin margin. It’s very track position-dependent. So, if you’re out in the lead, you’re burning a lot more fuel. We’re just up against really tight windows.”