KANSAS CITY, Kan. — For a moment, strip the identities away from the drivers involved in the overtime restart on Sunday at Kansas Speedway and ask yourself a question: Did any of them do anything wrong?

Without the teammate, manufacturer and driver/owner dynamics at play, how can you point the finger can at any of them?

No one did anything dirty.

No one wrecked anyone.

They were all racing hard while going for the win in a playoff race — and all as playoff drivers who had yet to advance to the next round.

Of course, once you apply the identities, the perspective changes for many fans. They believe Denny Hamlin — team owner of Bubba Wallace’s car at 23XI Racing and also a Toyota teammate — cost Wallace the win in the final corners when he washed up the track. Wallace brushed the wall, Hamlin was too high to cover the bottom and a non-Toyota in Chase Elliott won the race instead.

Wallace flipped Hamlin the middle finger and called him a “dumba—” after the race. Fans were angry at Hamlin for what they perceived to be a selfish move.

But here’s the question: Doesn’t NASCAR need drivers to be selfish when going for the win?

Imagine the reaction today if Hamlin doesn’t race hard and lets Wallace score the victory unchallenged. There would be accusations of race manipulation, an online mob discrediting Wallace’s win as undeserved, and an angry Joe Gibbs Racing organization, which would now realize Hamlin puts another team’s interests ahead of their own.

Hamlin didn’t do anything malicious. He had a chance to score his long-sought 60th career Cup Series win on a dominant day at Kansas — spoiled only by a backup pit crew member — and was unable to turn the wheel enough to give Wallace room while potentially struggling with power steering.

Some argue Hamlin should have used better judgment, knowing his steering issues could cause him to crowd Wallace too much. But again: If he backs off and races as an owner instead of a driver, or for a teammate over oneself, then NASCAR has a lot bigger problems.

When it comes to the win, drivers should always be encouraged to go for it — teammates or not. This wasn’t Stage 2 at New Hampshire, when Ty Gibbs inexplicably raced JGR teammates Hamlin and Christopher Bell for 11th place like it was the final laps of the championship race and lacked big-picture thinking.

This was the last lap of a Round 2 playoff race. Sure, it’s easy to say a Toyota car should have won the race after the manufacturer lined up 1-2-3-4-5 for overtime. But suggesting the drivers should have worked together or figured out a way to sort it out so that one of them could be victorious is simply misguided.

Oh, and if Hamlin allowed Wallace to win? It would have negatively impacted the organization that employs him ahead of next week’s cutoff race, too. JGR’s Chase Briscoe, for example, would have been much more vulnerable to elimination at the Roval with Wallace jumping from below the points cutoff line to an automatic spot in Round 3.

“The whole last lap, once I felt like I was not going to win, I’m just like, ‘Anybody but the 23,’” Briscoe told me after the race. “Nothing against Bubba, but it just changes my situation so much. I’ve never been in a scenario like that where you know one guy winning changes your situation that drastically.”

JGR competition director Chris Gabehart told me after the race that Hamlin has to race as “Denny the driver, Denny the person who has built his legacy at Joe Gibbs Racing” and not as a team owner for 23XI.

“Man, I just couldn’t be more proud of him,” Gabehart said. “I hate it for how (Wallace) ended up, but Denny has got to get after it to try and win the race, and that’s what he did.”

Of course, it is unfortunate for Wallace. After a bad New Hampshire, he needed to win at Kansas and now faces elimination if he doesn’t get a victory at the Roval next week. And he’s never won on a road course before, so his title hopes are likely over.

Should 23XI employees be upset with their boss, Hamlin, for ruining Wallace’s chances? Maybe, and that’s their right — especially since now they’re staring at an early elimination for both cars (not just Wallace, but Tyler Reddick as well).

But as harsh as it sounds, that’s not Hamlin’s problem — not in the moment while competing as a driver, at least.

As for those without a direct interest in the outcome, Sunday’s race should be celebrated. NASCAR needs door-slamming finishes, pissed-off drivers and competitors going all out for the win. That’s what happened at Kansas, and if you remove the driver/team/manufacturer dynamics, what we witnessed becomes a whole lot clearer.

Huge for Hendrick

Jeff Gordon said Hendrick Motorsports realizes “we’re on our heels a little bit.”

Until Sunday, the team hadn’t won a race since William Byron captured Iowa on Aug. 3 — and even that was the only victory since Elliott won at Atlanta in June. Inexplicably, Kyle Larson still hasn’t won since the last Kansas race in May. Hendrick has slipped to only the third championship favorite, organization-wise, behind both JGR and Team Penske.

And for most of the Kansas race, it didn’t look like that was going to change. JGR cars dominated and led 81 percent of the laps while Larson (who throttled the field in the spring race) only led one lap as Byron struggled to stay on the lead lap.

So Elliott’s astounding overtime climb — from eighth to first in two laps and fifth to first on the final lap, thanks in part to a four-tire pit call from the oft-criticized Alan Gustafson — was a big-time jolt for an organization that had been searching for something positive. Larson had a solid sixth-place finish and Byron had a major rally to finish in the top 10 as well.

“These guys are just grinding it out, week in and week out,” said Gordon, vice chairman for Hendrick Motorsports. “There’s so much pressure on them in the playoffs. Obviously, the Fords have some real strengths, especially the Penskes at certain tracks, and the Toyotas — we saw that today, they were very, very strong on the long runs.

“Days like today make it even sweeter because it’s a team victory. It’s just, never give up and you put yourself in position all day long. Then you’ve got to have some things go your way.”

But while the stirring victory was great for Elliott and Hendrick fans, one amazing overtime restart does not overcome the reality of the team’s current situation. They are still behind their rivals; JGR or Penske cars will be the favorites at each of the remaining races this season.

There’s no hiding from that, but as Gordon said, teams in the Next Gen Era are “playing with hairs,” so if they’re off just a tick, “it can really make you look like you’re having a bad day.” That makes just staying alive in the playoffs crucial for drivers like Elliott, who are trying to stave off elimination while their teams search for answers.

“That can be the difference in somebody being mediocre to potentially getting on a hot streak or even a team collectively getting better throughout that course of time,” Elliott said. “If you’re not where you want to be, you’re just trying to buy yourself more time.

“Fortunately, we bought (ourselves) three more weeks, and we’ll fight like hell until they tell us to not.”

Chase Elliott and Jeff Gordon

Chase Elliott celebrates Sunday’s win with Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon. It was the first win for a Hendrick car since Aug. 3. (Sean Gardner / Getty Images)What makes Kansas so good

From this view, Kansas entered the weekend with the reputation for having the consistently best racing with the Next Gen car. And Sunday did nothing to change that.

I’d rank the best Next Gen tracks like this:

  1. Kansas
  2. Charlotte oval
  3. Homestead
  4. Darlington
  5. Michigan

I asked Elliott why exactly Kansas is so darn good on a regular basis with this car, and he said in the simplest terms possible, it’s the track’s shape — providing wide entries and different lane options — combined with a smooth surface.

“This car likes places where you can enter in different lanes, and where the struggles come in are when you’re stuck behind someone in a really small preferred lane on corner entry. Then your options dwindle, and that’s when the challenges begin,” he said. “This place, just the way it’s shaped, the way the surface is, everything just suits it about as perfectly as we could have a track do that.”

Championship 4cast

Each week during the playoffs, we’re taking a look at the current projections to advance to NASCAR’s championship race at Phoenix in November.

1. Denny Hamlin (last week: 2; pre-playoffs: 3). Hamlin probably wins Kansas if his wheel doesn’t come off at Bristol, which cost him two suspended pit crew members for Sunday. He still dominated the race and had one of the best cars of his career in comparison to the field.

2. Ryan Blaney (last week: 1; pre-playoffs: 2). Even after a terrible start to the weekend for Team Penske and a backup car for Blaney after crashing in practice, he was going to have a late restart in the top five until a speeding penalty took him out of contention. Again, if he makes it to Phoenix …

3. Chase Briscoe (last week: 3; pre-playoffs: 4). Briscoe would have been in a dicey spot heading to the Roval had Wallace won, but now he has a little more breathing room to the cut line. He’s not comfortable though, as he told me: “We’ve seen it time and time again — the whole playoff field is gonna get stage points, (the track position) is gonna get flipped, and you’re in a restart running 20-something and you’re in the chaos and the mess. So it’s really hard to go there and feel safe with anything.”

4. Christopher Bell (last week: honorable mention; pre-playoffs: not ranked). Bell suddenly has four straight top-10s and is showing strength regularly again when it counts the most. If he can avenge his Vegas defeat from last fall in two weeks, look out.

Honorable mention: Kyle Larson, William Byron, Chase Elliott, Joey Logano.

(Top photo of Chase Elliott beating Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Bubba Wallace to the finish line Sunday at Kansas Speedway: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)