The NASCAR Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium wasn’t without its issues. Beyond the weather postponing the event to Wednesday night, the race itself featured several questionable decisions from NASCAR.

At the halfway mark of the race, sleet arrived in Winston-Salem, N.C. NASCAR, despite the teams having wet-weather tires at their disposal, decided to delay the race to allow officials time to dry the track. Teams were then instructed to put the wet-weather tires on before the race resumed. When a fuel stop was made on Lap 165, Carson Hocevar and the No. 77 team put on slicks. They were penalized for doing so.

Jeff Gluck of The Athletic had a major issue with NASCAR “hand-holding” the teams during the Clash. He called for more freedom for teams to take risks and live with the outcome.

“I really don’t like the situation where I feel like NASCAR is still hand-holding the teams a little bit too much,” Gluck said on The Teardown. “With the wet-weather tires, we saw it the first year that we need to declare it a wet-weather race or whatever it is and get everyone to do this. Just let the teams, as in F1, ‘Hey, we’re taking a risk here. Is it going to be good enough for dry tires or do we need wet tires?’ If it’s wet tires, come on in and take wet tires. If you want to take your risk on dry tires, use your dry tires.

“Whatever happens, it’s what happens, right? That’s part of the racing and part of the strategy. I don’t like having the full field come down and make a decision.”

NASCAR Clash had plenty of controversy

The aforementioned pit stop for fuel was mandated by NASCAR after multiple cars ran out of fuel on the racetrack. James Small, crew chief for Chase Briscoe and the No. 19 team, took issue with NASCAR giving a lifeline to teams who didn’t put enough fuel in before the race.

Essentially, those teams who had enough fuel for the finish saw their strategy go up in smoke. Gluck felt NASCAR mismanaged the situation.

“That’s also what I didn’t like about the whole fuel situation, right? … So, the teams that needed fuel that didn’t fuel their tanks before as James Small was saying, they got bailed out by this decision to have everyone come down,” Gluck said. “The teams that were gonna be good, like, their strategy got thwarted essentially.

“Again, that’s fine if the teams didn’t want to fill up their fuel tank all the way but that’s a risk you take if you run out of fuel. You made your cars lighter and that’s too bad. I don’t want to see this continued pattern of we gotta do this or everyone is gonna run out.”