Hamlin's crew chief thinks two-lap overtime 'asinine' (cont'd)

"There is an advertised distance," Ford said. "You sit there on the pit box, and there is no strategy to plan for it. If the race had gone green, everyone could make it on fuel there. It comes down to you always are guessing how much of a buffer you need -- because you don't know. You don't know when you're racing until; there is no set end-point. You can't call a race like that. It's just crazy.

"Like I said, there is an advertised distance. There is an end point. If it's a 500-mile race, it should be a 500-mile race. You can't help if someone broke an engine with a few laps to go. But you go back to the shop with a torn-up racecar when you were going to have a good finish. It just doesn't work out."

Sunday's race was the second of the season that finished under the green-white-checkered scenario. The Food City 500 at Bristol on March 16 also finished under the same conditions, stretching what was scheduled to be a 500-lap event to a total of 506 laps.

There have been a total of 30 Cup races that have ended under green-white-checkered conditions since 2004. The first was the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway that summer, and NASCAR officials have long argued that the rule creates more exciting finishes.

J.D. Gibbs, president of Joe Gibbs Racing and Ford's boss, said that he understands the crew chief's frustration. But he also said that the rules are the rules, and everyone has to play by them.

"We've been in this 17 years now, so we've seen a lot of stuff. My thing is, 'Look, whatever it is, just do the best you can with it, make it work.' It can be frustrating. But at the same time, it's the same for everybody," Gibbs said.

"Trust me, we've torn up some racecars. But if our concern is not tearing up racecars, there is a lot of other stuff I would change, too. But as far as the green-white-checkered goes, for us I would say, 'Hey, those are the rules and we'll work with it.'"

Ford said that he decided not to have Hamlin come in for fresh tires during the final caution at Texas because he knew the green-white-checkered finish likely would breed an accident.

"You're always at that point, but you want to stay in front of the wreck. You know there's going to be one," Ford said. "So when the guys in front of us stayed out, we stayed out. And that was about it.

"I don't think you saw guys advance just because they had fresh tires. Guys advanced because they had the ability because they were laying back on the restart, and the leader [eventual race winner Carl Edwards] didn't fire. So it got jumbled up. They're trying to get that advantage on the restart, and that's what created the stackup there."

Ford's argument was that the restart never should have happened, that the green-white-checkered finishes are recipes for possible widespread disaster every time.

"When you have the possibility for a green-white-checkered, that's the thing that you worry about the most, sitting on the box during the day," Ford said. "It's not whether you're going to be able to get your car in contention. Like I say, we tear up more racecars that way. ... It's just a crazy scenario. From a competitor's side, it's asinine."