HAMPTON, Ga. - Denny Hamlin, who thought he had enough gas while leading when his car sputtered and didn't start with three laps remaining in the Pep Boys Auto 500, actually had water in his fuel cell at the time.
Whether that caused him not to accelerate and get hit from behind by Martin Truex Jr. is uncertain, Joe Gibbs Racing Senior Vice President Jimmy Makar said Sunday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway, site of the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race.
But what is certain is that Hamlin and Bill Davis Racing's Dave Blaney had water in their fuel cells, and Roush Fenway Racing's Greg Biffle also might have had a similar situation.
NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Director John Darby said that no water was found in the Sunoco pumps following the race. Darby said all of the Sunoco documentation from the weekend shows no water in the tanks.
"The teams did give me a sample from each of those cars that has a little bit of water in it, but again water always settles to the bottom," Darby said. "What you don't know is when the water got introduced, was it two weeks ago, was it a week ago ...
"What we're pretty confident of is the dump cans they were using today, because they're all stored in their tractor trailers and locked up all weekend, and all the fuel that we've taken, including just doing a chemical test on the [Sunoco] tanks over there, show no condensation."
The crew chiefs of the afflicted teams were perplexed, as was Hamlin.
"All day we had been getting water in our fuel," Hamlin said. "The water displaces fuel, and so we weren't getting the full potential of fuel. We took it apart again [after the race] and pulled some gas out of [the] fuel cell and again we get water.
"It's a shame. ... Once again, it wasn't our day."
The fact that it affected at least two different teams and manufacturers (Hamlin drives a Chevrolet, Blaney a Toyota) - and possibly three (Biffle drives a Ford) - is perplexing as well.
"Because of the difference in the individual teams that have shown us water in it," said Darby, who dismissed talk of sabotage of select teams. "That's the reason we're trying to backtrack to figure out where it came from. ... Our focus is more on trying to understand where the water came from."
Biffle, whose car was on the pole, was having acceleration problems at the start of the race but was able to finish the event.
"I don't want to take too much of the fuel system apart because we had trouble from the start of the race," crew chief Greg Erwin said. "I want to take it back to the shop and pull a vacuum on it and take it apart one piece at a time.
"We checked the filter. There didn't appear to be anything in the filter. From the very, very start, about 20 laps into the race, ... he thought it was going to blow up. Obviously it ran all race. It didn't smoke any oil out. There's something weird going on."
Blaney's team also was trying to figure out what happened.
"We had water in our fuel from the get-go, all day," said Blaney crew chief Tommy Baldwin. "We put [the car] back in the garage and worked on it and didn't know what was going on. We drained it - half water and half fuel."
Baldwin said the fuel still had water in it at the end of the race but didn't know for sure how that happened.
"There might have been some remnants still in there," Baldwin said. "I'm guessing we were probably one of the first ones to get fuel - us and the [No.] 11 this morning or something. We're trying to find out the chain of events now."
Makar said he didn't know if his team would be able to determine how the water got in the fuel cell, but Darby expected to make some progress in his investigation.
"We'll get a good direction," Darby said. "What we do kind of believe is that it may have came on the initial, the very first fill of the day. Water settles to the bottom [of the tank].
"But just as soon as you move enough gallons of fuel through anything, then it's liable to flush out and be clean. That's what we're trying to find out the sequence of the cans that got filled this morning.[end]"
Now what about Wheelgate?
The 2 and the 12 AND the 48 also had water in the fuel, I’m sure we will hear more about this.