Ty Dillon wasn’t entirely satisfied to the degree in which NASCAR penalized Austin Cindric after the right rear hook on the fourth lap of last week’s race at Circuit of the Americas.
It was a common consensus across the garage too.
“I was expecting a one race suspension,” Dillon said on Saturday afternoon at Phoenix Raceway.
Instead, NASCAR docked Cindric 50 championship points and issued a $50,000 fine, one that dropped him from inside of an early provisional playoff spot to well outside of it, which Dillon said he ‘was glad’ and hopefully that it was ‘enough to make him think about doing something like that again.’
NASCAR has targeted right rear hooks as especially egregious infractions in recent years, suspending Bubba Wallace and Chase Elliott for committing the violation on intermediate tracks in previous years, but also just fining Carson Hocevar last year when he did it to Harrison Burton under caution at Nashville.
“I think a one race suspension is what most of us expected,” Dillon said. “They set a standard a couple of years ago. I’m glad NASCAR handled most of it. I feel somewhat justified but we’ll see.”
NASCAR officials have said that they stopped short of a suspension because the infraction occurred on a road course, with slower speeds, and that Dillon was able to drive away from the frontstretch without bringing out a caution.
Dillon didn’t accept that explanation.
“I think that is where NASCAR gets itself into a little bit of trouble when they try to get into gray areas, deciding what is fast enough,” Dillon said. “For the past eight years they do a safety meeting at Daytona and show a video with a car sitting sideways and getting hit at 75 miles per hour; the amount of damage that does is pretty incredible.
“Luckily everyone saw me and didn’t hit me when I’m dead stopped parallel to the race track. Would that have been enough for a (suspension)?
“I think we just need to do a better job of making those calls black or white; setting a better standard but I know they’re in a tough spot making those decisions. They did a good enough job of making something out of it but I hope he knows he can’t do that again.”
For his part, Cindric explained that he did it because Dillon ran him off the track, onto the grass in the previous corner, but that he immediately felt remorse ‘moments later.’
“I handled myself poorly in the face of adversity and I need to do better,” Cindric said.
Did he expect a suspension?
“Like I said, that’s not up to me to make those calls,” Cindric said. “It’s a move that was penalized in the past and it was penalized again.”
Why did the usually even keeled Cindric even make that move?
“I was faced with adversity and have faced a lot of it to start the season, a lot of emotions and I handled them poorly,” Cindric said. “If faced with them again, I would like to think I would handle it differently.”
