NASCAR to take a closer look at Richmond finish
NASCAR will review all available data concerning the last lap events from Sunday night at Richmond Raceway where Austin Dillon made contact with two drivers en route to victory.
“Our sport has been a contact sport for a long time,” said NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer. “We always hear, ‘Where’s the line?’ and ‘Did someone cross the line?’ I would say that the last lap was awful close to the line.
“We’ll take a look at all the available resources from audio to video, listen to spotters, we’ll listen to crew chiefs and drivers, and if anything rises to a level that we feel like we need to penalize, then we’ll do that on Tuesday.”
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Dillon was running second when he drove into Turn 3 on the final lap of overtime in the Cook Out 400 and hit the rear bumper of Joey Logano’s Ford Mustang. The contact sent Logano into a spin and the outside wall. Logano, who finished 19th, called it a chicken (expletive) move as Dillon came from a couple of car lengths back to make contact.
The chain of events continued when Dillon hooked Denny Hamlin in the right rear of Turn 4. Hamlin was to the inside of Dillon – given the opportunity as Dillon washed up the track after the contact with Logano – before his car was shot to the outside wall because of the hook, which cleared Dillon’s path to victory.
Logano finished 19th. Hamlin crossed the finish line fifth.
“It happened fast,” Sawyer said when asked if NASCAR didn’t view anything egregious in real time. “But I would say, if you look at that, in my view that’s getting right up really close to crossing the line.”
Sawyer felt Sunday night was a great race with positives, such as the option tire Cup Series teams had in their allotment. But as it pertains to the last lap, Sawyer reiterated NASCAR is a contact sport that wants drivers to race hard. The debate during NASCAR’s review of what took place at Richmond is how far the drivers can go, and Sawyer also agreed that perhaps what’s acceptable in NASCAR today has changed from what was seen throughout its history.
“Our sport is 75 years old – a lot has happened in 75 years,” he said. “So, I think we have to learn from the incident tonight and move forward and see if there’s something that … racing in the era that we race in today and the way our young kids are coming up racing at short tracks, we want to make sure that the highest level of racing, which is NASCAR Cup Series, is done at the highest level and it’s done with the utmost integrity and sportsmanship and that’s what we’re about. So, we’ll see if we need to adjust accordingly going forward.”
Whether that will include a penalty to Dillon, perhaps even taking the win away, is to be determined.
“Historically that hasn’t been our DNA to take races away, but that’s not to say that going forward this wouldn’t start to set a precedent,” Sawyer said. “We have to look at it.”
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