Denny Hamlin has been around long enough to guess NASCARThis is the next move. When it came to the incident between Austin Cindric and Austin Dillon at Gateway Motorsports Park on Sunday, Hamlin perfectly predicted how the situation would be handled.
On Tuesday, NASCAR made the decision so as not to penalize Cindric for knocking Dillon out of the Enjoy Illinois 300 on Sunday. While some believed Cindric hooked Dillon at right back, there wasn’t enough evidence for the sport to mete out punishment.
Hamlin expected this outcome from NASCAR.
“It would be one of those where you say, ‘I see what you were doing here – trying to do.’ But the result was the same. So while it may not be as bad and the wreck wasn’t as bad, the intention was there,” Hamlin said during his speech. Harmful actions podcast.
“It’s a difficult situation. My gut tells me they won’t do anything, but is that true? I do not know if that’s true.
During the Coca-Cola 600, Hamlin had his own experience with a right rear hook incident. He was eliminated by Chase Elliott during the Cup Series event, knocking him out of contention.
Hamlin was furious, calling on NASCAR to suspend Elliott, which it ultimately did. The No. 9 driver did not participate in last weekend’s race in St. Louis. But this incident was a little more obvious than Sunday’s.
Immediately after the accident, Dillon asked NASCAR to impose a suspension on Cindric.
“I was intentionally destroyed by him” Dillon said.. “Hung well, just like Chase (Elliott) and Denny (Hamlin) and Bubba (Wallace) deal. He’d better be suspended next week.
Austin Cindric defends himself in the midst of controversy
Many fans watched the Enjoy Illinois Cup Series race on Sunday and thought Cindric’s hit on Dillon was intentional. Even Richard Childress arrested the driver, according to Jeff Gluck of Athleticism.
Tuesday, Cindric took to social media to explain the situation. He also provided data in several Twitter posts, indicating that nothing was done on purpose.
“I actually start to ease off the accelerator as I recognize car 3 is trying to close the gap,” Cindric wrote. “My steering angle doesn’t move to the left until we make contact. This isn’t exactly the type of behavior you’d expect from someone trying to grab and clip another car.
“Safety is a very important topic and taken very seriously in our industry. In reviewing the data, I do not see at any time any negligence towards the safety of others on the track by the drivers involved in this incident, myself included.
NASCAR vice president of competition Elton Sawyer agreed with the driver.
“We haven’t seen anything that would actually rise to a level that would result in a suspension or penalty,” Sawyer said. “It looked like a tough race. One car goes up a little and another car goes down. …
“As we said last week, we take these incidents very seriously when we see cars crashing head-on into another car or crashing head-on into the wall. I spent a lot of time looking at this, looking at all the data, watching TV footage and I found this race really difficult.
