FORT WORTH, Texas -- On top of the pit box for the No. 11 Toyota driven by Denny Hamlin, crew chief Mike Ford gritted his teeth as Sunday's Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway drew to its conclusion.

He sensed he knew what was coming: the dreaded green-white-checkered finish.

“

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.

”

MIKE FORD

Ford is no fan of NASCAR's rule to finish races -- extend them, really -- under the green-white-checkered that was instituted in 2004 to cut down on the number of events ending under caution. Sunday's race was completed under green-white-checkered when the caution came out on Lap 331 because the engine of the No. 1 Chevrolet driven by Martin Truex Jr. blew up, spewing oil all over the track.

It took NASCAR a total of six caution laps to get the oil cleaned up, taking the race three laps over its scheduled 334-lap duration. Then two more were added for the green-white-checkered finish, making it a 339-lap race by the time it was completed.

"Green-white-checkers, man. I mean, go back and watch 'em. They're just terrible," Ford said. "You tear up more freakin' cars in that stupid crap than is needed."

That included Sunday's finish, when Clint Bowyer attempted to make some aggressive moves on the restart with two to go and ended up trading paint with Hamlin before Bowyer's No. 07 Chevrolet went bouncing into the outside wall.

"You tore up more in that than you tore up in the whole other 500 miles," Ford said. "It's asinine. It's not racin'. It turns into complete gambles and guys drive like idiots. I don't know what happened with the 07, but it was a jumbled-up restart and he dove down into [Turn] 1, and it was just stupid. You tear up a lot of racecars for no reason."

Hamlin fell from fourth to fifth as a result of tangling with Bowyer, who surged as high as third before hitting the wall and ultimately falling all the way back to 10th.

"Clint just pinched me up there on the final lap. I had to turn left or I'd have gone into the wall. There was really no place to go," Hamlin said.

Ford said another problem with the green-white-checkered finishes is that crew chiefs cannot accurately plan for them. And the best-laid plans of crew chiefs can be destroyed in an instant if they calculate fuel mileage and tire wear based on a race going precisely 500 miles -- and it ends up going 507.5 miles like Sunday's. (Continued)