A fuel stop with four laps to go. A driver refueling his fuel tank in the work area that wasn't supposed to. A miscommunication on the broadcast about the open-red in the closing laps. Kyle Larson sounding off on smaller fuel cells.

Wednesday's Pennsylvania Speedweek feature at Port Royal Speedway won by Anthony Macri was drama-filled to say the least. The Central PA half-mile has received backlash since the conclusion of the 30-lap feature for the topics listed above, minus Larson’s comments about majority of Sprint Car teams using smaller, 28-gallon fuel cells — whereas he runs a 33-gallon tank, plenty to carry him to Wednesday’s finish — but that’s another topic for another time.

• 2025 PA Speedweek Wednesday Results At Port Royal Speedway

Port Royal promotor Steve O’Neal was disappointed with how Wednesday’s program went down, for both reasons his racetrack could control and for reasons they couldn’t control, like the optics that come with Macri coincidentally running out of fuel moments before the lap-25 caution and eventual fuel stop that ended up saving his race.

But for those who think O’Neal’s officiating team quote-unquote bent the rulebook for Macri’s benefit, that’s far from the truth and an unfair claim against O’Neal, the 49th Auto-Racing Promoter of the Year at this February's RPM workshops in Daytona Beach, Fla., who cares deeply about the fans and drivers who walk through racetrack.

Let’s go through Wednesday’s list of events, blow-by-blow:

• Perhaps the biggest controversy of the night was Danny Dietrich refueling his race car in the work area, not under the eventual open-red, after he ran out of fuel two laps before the lap-26 caution. O’Neal said that “Danny should not have been allowed to fill up his fuel in the work area.”
• Another development Wednesday was the leader Macri spinning to avoid a flipped-over Brock Zearfoss on lap 24. Macri retained the lead because the red flag was already out for Zearfoss, therefore meaning the race was already stopped. Despite that, Macri knew those events alone would draw mixed reactions: “Not knowing how they were going to rule that one, that made me sick to my stomach because, I mean, I was genuinely spinning to avoid him. That can be seen different ways,” he said.
• The final lap-26 caution wasn’t some phantom stoppage to save Macri’s night and was triggered by Justin Whittall and Ryan Newton running out of fuel.
• The fuel stop occurred under that lap-26 stoppage because up to that point, 48 green- and caution-flag laps had been completed with five laps remaining (plus additional pace laps) and drivers were going to exceed the speedway’s 55-lap limit before a fuel stop is needed. In hindsight, O’Neal and team could’ve held this fuel stop sooner, but they were also not in the 55-lap window that calls for refueling.
• O’Neal’s announcing team misspoke when calling the open-red a fuel-only closed-red, suggesting that teams couldn’t make any car-related adjustments: “Anytime there’s a fuel stop, there’s an open-red, too. They get two minutes to change anything on the car except tires,” said O’Neal, who emphasized he doesn’t have enough officials to police fuel-only stops.

So when Macri’s No. 39m team was seen making car-related adjustments under the open-red, the conspiracy theories made its rounds on social media. Macri’s crew chief Joe Mooney told FloRacing “I know we did nothing wrong” because “an open-red is an open-red.”

“At the end of the day, my driver did the best job from lap 1-30 in that race, and my crew did the best job under that open-red,” Mooney said. “And it was 100 percent by the rules. I got nothing to feel bad about.”

If there’s anything O’Neal feels bad about, it’s the fans that say they didn’t have a good experience Wednesday.

“The fans are very important to us because without them, there is no show,” said O’Neal, who added that he and his crew did their best in cutting out unnecessary pace laps before and during the 30-lap feature knowing the track would have increased power and fuel demands given considerable recent rainfall.

O’Neal even said they nixed four-wide parade laps for that very reason. But conversations around trying to cut down the lap count to save teams fuel stems from the more-overarching topic of smaller fuel cells vs. larger fuel cells. According to the Paul Silva-owned No. 57 team, they had six gallons of fuel left in the tank under the lap-26 red flag, plenty enough to carry them home to the finish.

In his post-race interview on the frontstretch, Larson expressed frustrations about rules lenient toward smaller fuel cells.

“We set all these laps for guys who have small fuel tanks and we have a big one, and we never run out,” Larson said. “It is what it is. Maybe we can adjust some rules to how they should be for the big tanks.”

WATCH: Kyle Larson breaks down his wild runner-up finish at Port Royal and his take on smaller vs. larger fuel cells.

O’Neal understands Larson’s point of view.

“Tell me, who was running harder than Kyle Larson? He was running harder than anybody, but he didn't need fuel,” O’Neal said. “If there’s anybody who should’ve ran out of fuel, it should’ve been Larson, but he had six gallons of fuel left.”

After Wednesday night, O’Neal says that he will revisit the amount of laps ran before a fuel stop becomes necessary with his officiating team. Neighboring Central PA track BAPS Motor Speedway has taken this initiative this season, shortening the amount of laps ran before they deem a fuel stop necessary.

O’Neal also pointed out how Knoxville Raceway makes weekly programs work running 20-lap features as opposed to 25, but shortening length of features doesn’t appeal to him because “we don’t want to take away laps from fans.”

But on the contrary, “we hear fans say we don’t want to see them have to stop for fuel,” and O’Neal sees that side of the argument as well and how fuel stops can stunt the excitement of a racing program.

All told, O’Neal and his crew simply found themselves in a no-win situation Wednesday.