Quick takeaways from Phoenix: Johnson and Truex get rare pitting penalties

• Jimmie Johnson and Martin Truex Jr. each got penalties for pulling up to pit during Sunday’s race at Phoenix. If you’re unfamiliar with what pulling up to pit means, it’s OK. It’s a penalty that NASCAR rarely calls.

Both Johnson and Truex were dinged for the infractions during the first half of Sunday’s race. The two drivers were each the first cars heading to pit road at the time and accelerated towards pit road as they left the track from behind the pace car.

[Related: Joey Logano and Kyle Busch advance to championship round at Homestead]

In each instance, Johnson (who qualified for the final round of the Chase because of a win at Martinsville) and Truex (eliminated from the Chase) passed the pace car while they were accelerating towards the pit road commitment line before slowing down for pit road speed. Johnson called the call “mind-blowing.”

“In the 15 years I’ve been here that has never been officiated that way,” Johnson said. “The leader has always had the ability to pull up and maintain whatever gap they had to the cars behind them. They have never penalized the leader and make the leader stay alongside the pace car”

On the majority of the tracks we compete at you just naturally progress in front of the pace car. So now to all of a sudden officiate this is mind blowing to me. As long as they continue to do it from here on forward I will bite my lip and won’t say another word, but it just seems a little odd to be quite honest with you.”

This is what the NASCAR rule book has to say about pulling up to pit.

Since last year’s Chase race at Phoenix included the enforcement of a NASCAR rule that hadn’t been enforced in the past, we went back to the spring race at the track to see if cars had passed the pace car as they were pitting. And sure enough, cars were hitting the pit road commitment line before the pace car.

And there’s this picture from Kansas too, when Matt Kenseth was leading there.

Oh, and Alex Bowman passed the pace car — and subsequently slowed down — before Truex’s penalty happened.

Both Johnson and Truex saw crashes end their races at Phoenix. And it’s hardly a stretch to say that they were involved in the incidents because of the track position lost due to the penalties.

[Related: Breaking down how Matt Kenseth got crashed out of the Chase]

It’s not unlike NASCAR to start enforcing rules more stringently in the middle of the season. The sanctioning body tried to cut down on restart shenanigans before the Chase in 2015 and also redefined its laser inspection and lug nut rules in 2016. But the insistence on cracking down at Phoenix seemingly came out of nowhere.

And, quite honestly, it’s a good thing for the sanctioning body that none of the penalties involved drivers racing for a title shot. There’s no reason why a pulling up to pit penalty should significantly impact the championship.

• But lug nuts are, at least in the Xfinity Series. Elliott Sadler had two lug nuts loose on his car following Saturday’s Xfinity Series race. Sadler qualified for the championship four at Homestead and will be without the services of crew chief Kevin Meendering, who will be suspended for the race because of the infraction.

Had Sadler had three lug nuts loose he could have faced a points penalty that knocked him out of title contention altogether.

• Denny Hamlin ended up seventh after taking two tires before Matt Kenseth’s crash. He missed the final round of the Chase by six points.

Hamlin and crew chief Mike Wheeler tried a track position strategy to get the lead during the last pit stops of regulation. But Hamlin’s decision to stay out before a lap 261 restart backfired with a caution five laps later.

Hamlin had stabilized in second place after Kenseth passed him for the lead. But the ensuing restart meant Hamlin had to play defense again. And he couldn’t do it on older tires.

“I knew that when I saw we were the only ones to stay out, I knew we had an uphill climb and I still thought we were okay. We singled out second behind [Kenseth] and honestly our lap times cleaned out nice there … We had that caution and that put me on the bottom on the restart and I just got shuffled from there.”

• Kevin Harvick (fourth) and Kurt Busch (fifth) had top-five runs on Sunday. But they both needed wins to advance to Homestead. So for the first time in the current Chase format, a Stewart-Haas car (AKA Harvick) won’t be in the final round.

“We got up to the front as high as third and sniffed the front to try to win because we had to win to advance,” Busch said. “We didn’t get the job done. The long run speed is where our Achilles’ heel was these last few Chase races. It’s a little disappointing, maybe we can pinpoint that as our exact problem and figure out how to fix that.”

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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