Freddie Kraft pushes back on criticism of Denny Hamlin crew chief Chris Gayle after championship heartbreaker

No. 11 team crew chief Chris Gayle has taken a lot of stick over the last couple of the days for his four-tire call on the pit stop before overtime of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series championship race at Phoenix Raceway. Ultimately, that call played a part in Denny Hamlin falling short of winning his first championship.

Hamlin restarted 10th after a slew of drivers took two tires. Kyle Larson was one of those drivers, and he restarted fifth. Larson got a good restart, and the gap between he and Hamlin was too much. Larson finished third, good enough to win his second championship.

Freddie Kraft, spotter for Bubba Wallace and the No. 23 team, said that typically, spotters are able to see the entirety of pit road and relay information to crew chiefs about what other teams are doing. At Phoenix, however, it’s different.

“There’s a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking saying Gayle should have done two [tires]. Obviously, in the hindsight, yes, he probably should have done two,” Kraft said on Monday’s Door Bumper Clear podcast. “… What I will say is normally that’s on the spotters — and I’m sure some of the war room people can do the same — but usually we’re on the front straightaway looking at the entirety of pit road, and we can see the guys in these late stalls and relay, ‘Alright, this one put two on, this one put two on.’ Phoenix is a different story because we’re in the middle of that corner, and you have no depth going down that back straightaway.

“I don’t know what the conversation was with [No. 11 team spotter Chris] Lambert, he might have told him or not, but Lambert wouldn’t have known, I mean, you could have guessed by how fast he got out of the box, but he would have not known for sure the 5 put two tires on because you can’t see his box from where we’re standing. Now, maybe someone in the war room can say, ‘Hey, the 5 only went with two.'”

Denny Hamlin falls short of winning first NASCAR championship

The defeat was crushing for Hamlin. He led 208 laps, a record for any driver in a championship race. If not for William Byron blowing a tire with three laps to go and ending up in the wall, forcing NASCAR to throw a caution, he would have cruised his way to the championship.

It came down to one pit stop. While it didn’t work out, Kraft doesn’t believe Gayle deserves the criticism he’s received.

“I think for Gayle, you just can’t expect six guys — five of them that have no implications on the championship — to do two tires there because are they just getting in there to disrupt things maybe? I don’t know, but you got three guys that you probably don’t expect to stay out. Then you got six guys that take two. He just put four on and it worked out; he took the lead off Turn 2 essentially on the first lap,” Kraft said. “So, you’re thinking I’ve got the best car, I’m gonna fire four on it and let my guy go execute a restart like he just did and win the championship.

“I don’t even know that even if Lambert told him, ‘these guys are coming on two,’ he probably would have said, ‘alright, I don’t give a sh*t, we’re gonna go beat them like we just did.’ So, the people that are Monday morning quarterbacking Gayle about you should have gone two, maybe in hindsight, but I have no problem with the four-tire call.”