Prejudicial actions are all the rage in NASCAR right now and not on Denny Hamlin’s podcast of the same name.
This is the subset of sections in the NASCAR rulebook that oversees behavioral penalties for issues such as intentional crashes and fighting, topics that continue to come up this summer. causing both the industry and fans to think about the application of consistency throughout each instance.
For example, at Nashville Superspeedway, Layne Riggs was parked two laps for a retaliatory rear bumper shot under caution against Stefan Parsons. Two days later, Carson Hocevar received no real-time penalty for intentionally hooking Harrison Burton at right back on bail. but received a $50,000 fine later that week.
That’s the same fine Bubba Wallace received after the race weekend in downtown Chicago for a door slam that pushed Alex Bowman into the wall after the checkered flag. At the same time this was happening, Chase Elliott delivered a considerably lighter blow to Daniel Suarez and received nothing more than a chat from league officials.
A conversation is exactly what Corey Lajoie will receive before the race weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for his contribution to an incident in which Kyle Busch dropped his bumper and picked up 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 (against Denny Hamlin in the Coca-Cola 600) and Bubba Wallace in 2022 (against Kyle Larson) in Las Vegas.
But then, if what Wallace did to Bowman was so egregious, why wasn’t Ty Gibbs fined over $15,000 for hitting Sam Mayer on pit road in 2022 at Martinsville in the Xfinity Series. Even if you increase that to 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 $75,000 penalty to Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for throwing first punch at Kyle Busch after All-Star Racemainly on the grounds that he had two hours to think about it.
“I’m not even going to pretend what they’re thinking,” Stenhouse said when asked about the various penalties and consistency issues over the weekend at Pocono Raceway.
And there were a lot of them too.
Bowman has consistently said he doesn’t want to see NASCAR issue a penalty to Wallace because he believes 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 had been penalized for what he did to Bowman, it was worth having a conversation about whether Elliott would be subject to a penalty based solely on his intent. Suarez said the contact was only lighter than Wallace and Bowman’s because he was driving more defensively.
“It’s a tricky situation because what would happen if I wasn’t paying attention and I got hit? Was he going to get fined. I’m fine because I was paying attention and I didn’t get hit, so he won’t get fined. It’s a little tricky.
“I think it’s a pretty big penalty, $50,000 for hitting someone. I’m not saying Chase should have been fined. He shouldn’t have but it’s a big fine. A lot of people have done similar things this year. (Martin Truex Jr.) did it at Richmond. If it’s going to be a fine, it has to be consistent and NASCAR is doing its best to be consistent, but we’re not there yet.”
Real?
After getting blown out on the final restart by Hamlin, his door slammed on Kyle Larson after the checkered flag at Richmond, mostly because he was frustrated racing for third place and not the win, and then he walked to the back of his teammate’s car to show his frustration as well.
Truex targeted several drivers in this race and received no penalties afterward.
The difference, according to Elton Sawyer, NASCAR vice president of competition, during a press briefing Tuesday, is the severity of the contact.
“If you go back to Chicago, (Elliott) and (Suarez) versus (Wallace and Bowman), 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 sort of speeding up to catch (Suarez) and we’ve seen that for many years, drivers showing their displeasure after the race is over, very light contact…
“It’s reaching a level where we don’t want to be in the middle of it. That’s how we made the decision on it.”
Wallace was different, Sawyer said because of the force of the impact, the fact that the window net was down and the seat belts were loose.
“The right front tire comes off the ground on the 48 and the left side hits the wall,” Sawyer said. “The window screens are down. If you look at the on-board camera, the seat belts are loose on car 48. They look completely different.”
“This situation has reached a level where we could not allow this to continue the way (Wallace) reacted to (Bowman).”
So this is also Truex’s priority at Richmond, although he wanted to express his displeasure to two drivers, because the tires were not lifted off the ground and certainly no one was stuck against a wall.
But Elliott also felt like it was going too far.
“I don’t think he should have been fined,” Elliott said. “I get it. I get it. But you’re getting into the weeds with some of this stuff. Nobody got hurt. It was unfortunate, I guess, just because of the circumstances, but I didn’t see it being 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 went beyond a tough run.
“Going back to last weekend, we’re racing, competing, two guys racing hard,” Sawyer said. “If you listen to the audio from (Lajoie’s) car, we didn’t hear anything from the driver. I know there were comments from the crew chief or the spotter, but neither of them are driving the car. I’ve had these 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 place there, but yeah, that one, in the race, we’re letting the guys race.”
Sawyer said it was different if there had been an intentional left hook to the right back, 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 getting guys at right back, we showed we would respond to that.”
Everything is fair.
The only thing Sawyer doesn’t think is fair, at least accurate, is the perception that NASCAR imposes penalties based on how social media reactions filter through in the days following a potential infraction. There was consensus that Stenhouse was fined so heavily because it took place 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 the show, while Elliott and Suarez were not.
“It’s a judgment call,” Hamlin said. “More than likely we’ve seen these things happen in other sports where the camera is on you live, not in a cut where you would say ‘oh, by the way, that happened after the checkerboard’, I think being live and everyone seeing it probably caused a little more uproar on social media, which they then responded to.”
When Cup Series general manager Brad Moran said that the in-car videos released after the race “caught our attention” were not referring to the temperature of the fan base, but rather a snapshot of the content reviewed each week, it didn’t matter.
“That’s not what he meant and I know what he meant because we talked about it,” Sawyer said. “He meant it brought this to our attention, which we always do.”
Finally, regarding consistency, Sawyer says yes, but fans often don’t consider how multiple strikes factor into a decision and that was best exemplified 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 tower, I said to Seth Kramlich, the director of the show, ‘you need to talk to Layne and Stefan,’ and he said he’d already talked to Layne.
“So, I said, the next step is to hold him for two rounds, and the next step is what happened to Carson, is to go through his wallet.
“We’re looking at them. We would rather wait and get all the data, all the pictures and audio in order to make the right decision. That’s not to say that in Cup we won’t hold someone for multiple rounds, 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 can go on and on about how we’ve been consistent.
“The end result, the fans can watch it and we love our fans and their views, but from the officials’ point of view our goal is to be fair, but again, every situation is a little bit different.”
Matt Weaver is a motorsport insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
