Harmful actions are all the rage in NASCAR right now, and Denny Hamlin’s podcast of the same name isn’t.
It’s the subset of NASCAR rulebook sections that oversees conduct penalties for issues like intentional collisions and fighting, topics that continue to come up this summer, leading both the industry and fans to think about applying consistency throughout each instance.
For example, at Nashville Superspeedway, Layne Riggs was parked two laps after retaliating to the rear bumper under caution against Stefan Parsons. Two days later, Carson Hocevar received no real-time penalty for intentionally clipping Harrison Burton in the right rear under caution. but was fined $50,000 later in the week.
That’s the same fine Bubba Wallace received after the race weekend in downtown Chicago for slamming the door and smashing Alex Bowman into the wall after the checkered flag. At the same time, Chase Elliott delivered a much lighter blow to Daniel Suarez and received nothing more than a reprimand from league officials.
Corey Lajoie will be getting a scolding ahead of race weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for his role in an incident in which Kyle Busch slammed his bumper and hit several other drivers before hitting the wall.
Some have drawn parallels to the right rear hooks into the wall that led to suspensions last year for Chase Elliott (vs. Denny Hamlin at the Coca-Cola 600) and Bubba Wallace in 2022 (vs. Kyle Larson) in Las Vegas.
But then, if what Wallace did to Bowman was so egregious, why wasn’t Ty Gibbs fined more than $15,000 for hitting Sam Mayer in pit lane in 2022 at Martinsville in the Xfinity Series. Even if you factor that into the Cup Series rates, that’s maybe $30,000 at most for something that was potentially more harmful to more people than what Wallace did.
This doesn’t even begin to make sense of the Ricky Stenhouse Jr. fined $75,000 for first punch to Kyle Busch after All-Star racemainly on the pretext that he had two hours to think about it.
“I’m not even going to pretend what they think,” Stenhouse said when asked about the various penalties and consistency questions over the weekend at Pocono Raceway.
And there were plenty of them too.
Bowman has always said he doesn’t want NASCAR to issue a penalty to Wallace because he feels the retaliation was deserved. Of course, that’s something Bowman can afford to feel after winning the Chicago Street Race, and maybe he’s being kind.
But Suarez then said that if Wallace was penalized for what he did to Bowman, it was worth discussing whether Elliott should be subject to a penalty based solely on intent. Suarez said the contact was lighter than Wallace and Bowman only because he was driving more defensively.
“It’s a tricky situation because what if I wasn’t paying attention and I got hit? Would he have been fined? I’m fine because I was paying attention and I didn’t get hit, so he didn’t get fined. It’s a bit tricky.”
“I think it’s a pretty big penalty, $50,000 for hitting somebody. I’m not saying Chase should have been fined. He shouldn’t have been fined, but it’s a big fine. A lot of people have done similar things this year. (Martin Truex Jr.) did it in Richmond. If it’s going to be a fine, it has to be consistent and NASCAR does its best to be consistent, but we’re not there yet.”
True X?
After being caught off guard by Hamlin on the final restart, he slammed the door on Kyle Larson after the checkered flag at Richmond, mostly because he was frustrated that he was racing for third place and not the win, then rear-ended his teammate’s car to show his frustration as well.
Truex targeted several drivers during that race and received no penalties afterward.
The difference, NASCAR vice president of racing Elton Sawyer said at a news conference Tuesday, is the severity of the contact.
“If you go back to Chicago, (Elliott) and (Suarez) versus (Wallace and Bowman), it’s two completely different scenarios,” Sawyer said. “You have one, where (Elliott) … and we had a conversation with him … but the two scenarios are different because Chase is kind of accelerating to catch up to (Suarez) and we’ve seen that for many years, drivers showing their displeasure after the race is over, very slight contact …
“It brings us to a point where we don’t want to be involved in all of this. That’s how we made this decision.”
Wallace was different, Sawyer said, because of the severity of the impact, the fact that the window net was down and the seat belts had come loose.
“The right front tire comes off the ground on 48 and the left tire hits the wall,” Sawyer said. “The window nets are down. If you look at the dash cam, the seat belts are coming off on 48. They’re completely different.”
“This situation reached a level where we could not allow it to continue the way (Wallace) reacted to (Bowman).”
So that priority applies to Truex in Richmond as well, even though he wanted to express his displeasure to two drivers because the tires weren’t lifted off the ground and certainly no one was pinned against a wall.
But Elliott also felt it was going too far.
“I don’t think he should have been fined,” Elliott said. “I get it. I get it. But you get into the details with some of these things. Nobody got hurt. It was unfortunate, I guess, just the circumstances, but I don’t think it’s a big deal.”
In the case of Lajoie and Stenhouse, Sawyer said the SMT data and radio transmission were all evaluated and they found nothing that rose above the level of hard racing.
“Going back to last weekend, we were racing, competing, two guys going at it hard,” Sawyer said. “If you listen to the sound system in (Lajoie’s) car, we didn’t hear anything from the driver. I know there was some commentary from the crew chief or the spotter, but none of them were driving the car. I’ve had those guys in my ear before. They’re not driving.”
“We plan on having a conversation with Corey to make sure he’s in a good position there, but yeah, that one, in the race, we let the guys race.”
Sawyer said it was different if there had been an intentional hook to the right rear, but they didn’t see anything beyond Lajoie’s refusal to lift.
“No penalty on the 7,” he said. “If you go back, you start catching guys at right back, we’ve shown we’ll react to that.”
Everything is fair.
The only thing Sawyer finds unfair, or at least inaccurate, is the idea that NASCAR hands out penalties based on how social media reactions filter through in the days following a potential infraction. There was a consensus that Stenhouse was fined so heavily because the incident occurred during the All-Star race and received widespread public attention.
Hamlin suggested that Wallace was only fined because of the attention his ordeal deserved, since it was filmed in real time on air, while Elliott and Suarez were not.
“It’s a judgment call,” Hamlin said. “More than likely we’ve seen this happen in other sports where the camera is on you live, not on a clip where you’re like, ‘Oh, by the way, that happened after the checkered flag,’ I think the fact that it was live and everyone saw it probably caused a little bit more of an outcry on social media, which they then responded to.”
When Cup Series general manager Brad Moran said the post-race onboard videos “caught our attention,” it wasn’t about the temperature of the fan base, but rather a snapshot of the content reviewed each week, regardless.
“That’s not what he meant and I know what he meant because we talked about it,” Sawyer said. “He meant it to bring this to our attention, which we always do.”
Finally, as far as consistency goes, Sawyer says they do, but fans often don’t consider the importance of multiple strikes in a decision and that was best illustrated by the decision to park Riggs for two rounds in Nashville.
“Back in Nashville, I explained to Layne Riggs why he was held back for two rounds,” Sawyer said. “In the round, I mentioned to Seth Kramlich, the show’s director, ‘You need to talk to Layne and Stefan,’ and he said he had already talked to Layne.
“So I said, the next step is to hold him for two laps, and the next step is what happened to Carson, is to go through his wallet.
“We look at them. We’d rather wait and get all the data, all the pictures and the audio so we can make the right decision. That’s not to say in Cup we wouldn’t hold someone back for multiple laps, but normally we try to do that, and like we’ve done in the past, going back to William and Denny two years ago in Texas or Larson and Bubba in Vegas, the consistency part, I could go on and on about how consistent we’ve been.
“The end result, the fans can watch it and we love our fans and their views, but from a refereeing perspective our goal is to be fair, but again, every situation is a little bit different.”
Matt Weaver is a motorsports specialist for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
