Oh, the double-yellow line rule. It giveth and it taketh away.
Matt DiBenedetto gets a career-best second-place finish. Not so fast.
DiBenedetto attempted to block William Byron in the fourth turn of the final lap, forcing the No. 24 car below the double yellow line. Back to 21st place you go.
Chris Buescher then did the same to Chase Elliott in the tri-oval. Originally called a penalty on Elliott, it was later reversed, awarding Elliott fifth place and Buescher 22nd place.
And going back to the DiBenedetto-Byron incident, Denny Hamlin then passed both of them below the double yellow line and won the race.
Take away the victory, right? Not so fast.
Byron was sideways on the apron in front of Hamlin because of DiBenedetto's block. That gave Hamlin the freedom to do what he felt necessary to avoid a wreck with Byron.
In that situation, diving to the apron was his only option and there's no penalty.
The rule is clear: don't advance a position below the double yellow line and don't don't force another driver below it.
Joey Logano forced another driver below the line twice during the race and was black flagged.
The rule was correctly officiated throughout the race, and Sunday was a perfect example of why it's been in place since 2001.
If the ending of Sunday's race became a free-for-all, a dozen cars would have been spinning in the grass coming to the checkered flag. That's if there would have been a dozen cars left at that point.
Sunday's race broke a track record with 13 caution flags and there were damaged cars in contention for the win because of it. That's with racing only being allowed between the wall and yellow line.
There's no need to encourage eight-wide racing on the back straightaway, cutting through the grass in the tri-oval or driving on the apron at the already chaotic superspeedways.
Without the double-yellow line rule, that's what would happen.
There's a reason other sports have in-bounds and out of bounds. The same goes for racing.
III
Well, Talladega wrecked everyone's lineup in the Riley Racing Challenge. The battle on the News Tribune sports desk was a close one, with my 556 points edging Tom Rackers' 555 points. Greg Jackson wasn't too far behind with 539 points. Good thing only the top 15 scores are counted for the season total. But I'm glad my gambles on Ty Dillon (third), John Hunter Nemecheck (eighth), Ryan Preece (10th) and Justin Haley (11th) paid off. Jacob Warren of Jefferson City was the local winner with 599 points. He earned 175 points for picking Hamlin to win and got top-five finishes from Byron and Elliott. Now, who is good at road courses again?