Within a span of three days, Austin Dillon opened a modern NASCAR ethical quandary and Cup Series officials worked very quickly to close it.
It’s not a definitive line but the sanctioning body made clear in how it penalized Dillon on Wednesday that egregiously intentional crashing to advance into or within the playoffs would not be acceptable. Most drivers said this was not a line they were comfortable crossing in the first place but NASCAR’s response ensured that Sunday at Richmond did not establish an acceptable standard.
Dillon kept the win, and the only reason he wasn’t outright disqualified is that there wasn’t a mechanism in the rule book to allow it days afterwards, but instead saw his playoff berth and playoff points stripped as an encumbered victory.
The final corner saw Dillon drive over four car lengths back without any intent to lift in spinning Joey Logano, who had just taken the lead on the restart, prior to turning hard left to right rear hook Denny Hamlin into the wall so he could drive to the finish line unchallenged.
The penalty is currently under appeal.
“I want to get through the appeal process and then I’ll gladly give my point of view about the story as best I can,” Dillon said on pit road to a media scrum prior to Cup Series practice at Michigan International Speedway on Saturday.
He feels confident about their case too.
“I feel pretty good about it,” Dillon said. “Denny has a podcast (episode) about the appeal’s process and lays out pretty well about how the appeal usually works and I think that’s why he was very forthcoming earlier this week about everything because the appeal process isn’t easy.
“But we have people doing a great job on our side about covering our bases and see what the outcome really is.”
The near unanimous consensus amongst the active roster is that Dillon went beyond ethically dubious racing to outright intentional crashing and it’s something that NASCAR could not deem acceptable.
Erik Jones, who also needs nothing less than a win to make the playoffs at this stage of the season, says he couldn’t do what Dillon did on Sunday.
“No, not a chance,” Jones said. “I don’t race that way. I wouldn’t have done it. I can probably count, oh I honestly don’t know, less than five times that I’ve wrecked someone intentionally in my entire career. Just not the way I race. Everyone’s got their own code. Everybody has different ways that they go about it. For me, that’s just not the way I raced.”
And if his team told him that he had to do it, hypothetically?
“I don’t think I could do that,” Jones said. “That’s not to say that things don’t change in the moment, and how you were raced before that changes things. Obviously, that was not the situation here, but it depends on what is going down, but it is really not in my playbook.”
Christopher Bell said NASCAR refusing to act would give permission for this to happen with greater frequency during the playoffs.
“I’m happy that he isn’t in the playoffs because if they didn’t establish that, it would have opened a can of worms, that it’s anything goes,” Bell said. “So I’m happy they told it was it would not be accepted.”
That sentiment was echoed by Martin Truex Jr.
“The intent was ‘I am going to drive as deep in the corner as I can and hit the guy and do whatever I can to get by him,’ so I don’t agree with what he said but big picture, I’m glad they did something,” Truex said. “So I’m glad they did something. I understand the format, and that everyone blames that, but anyone can drive through the guy in front of them, anyone can do that, and it takes no talent at all.
“So I’m glad they did something because it will make anyone more hesistant to do that moving forward.”
Hamlin was amongst the two most aggrieved on Sunday, his impact with the wall generating the highest gForce spike in the Toyota history of the third year NextGen car. He largely endorsed the penalty, a degree of empathy for Dillon, and conviction that the line was at least better defined this week.
“I feel like I saw something that I’ve never seen before last week, and we saw an unprecedented penalty for it, so sometimes when you see something unprecedented, you have to respond in an unprecedented way,” Hamlin said. “I believe that hard racing is still okay. I think if two cars are battling side-by-side and one of them hits the wall because of close racing that is going to be deemed okay.
“I think if you come from a long way back – you were not going to win the race until you decided to wreck someone, I think that is clear line in the sand, but sometimes balls and strikes aren’t totally clear.
“There is one right on the edge and you have to call it, but it is up to us to make the decision. Do we want to put ourselves in that position where it could be called one way or the other? I think that you just have to live with the result. I think if NASCAR policies it and intentional wrecks for the win going forward, there is going to be some close calls, but you put yourself in that spot, so you are going to live with the result and the ruling on it.”
As for Dillon, one of his longest tenured friends in Cup, Dillon doesn’t personally begrudge him for it.
“I don’t have anything negative to say about this with Austin,” Hamlin said. I really don’t have anything negative to say about his character. I really stuck up for him quite about earlier in this year, when he was going through some pretty tough finishes and things like that, and talking about how I really respected his character, and I still do.
“He just was put in a really tough spot, where you have to make a split-second decision, and he made one that was not in the, in my opinion, best interest of the sport. People make mistakes, and I believe everyone deserves second chances.”
What about Logano?
“Every time something happens, you’re going to go back to a previous event and say, ‘is that okay or not okay’ and I think a line was definitely crossed on Sunday,” Logano said. “That was the conclusion they all reached. They handed out penalties and that’s what we’re going to go off of now.”
Ross Chastain offered the most even-keeled, devil’s advocate response when asked if he would be willing to do what Austin did, referencing the split-second decision he made to ride the wall at Martinsville to advance to the championship race in 2022.
That’s a move that was later banned by NASCAR, for what it’s worth.
“I don’t know.. I think it’s a case-by-case,” Chastain said. “I never thought I would drive into the wall in fifth gear at Martinsville until I did it. I think that no one knows what’s going through Austin’s head for that scenario.
“So, I don’t know.. I don’t have a predetermined decision on what I’m going to do. It’s just racing at the end of these races.”
Chastain won his first ever Cup race in 2022 at Circuit of the Americas in a race best described as a slug fest with AJ Allmendinger and Alex Bowman. Chastain said ethics went out the window but it was hard racing just short of intentionally just trying to crash each other.
“Obviously I feel like COTA was fine,” Chastain said. “I got moved; I covered the bottom in (Turn) 16 and AJ moved me off of that line. I think the biggest mistake there was that he didn’t move me far enough. He didn’t move me up into the rocks and into the tires.
“He gave me a chance to move him back and, in my opinion, if (Bowman) isn’t there, (Allmendinger) just goes wide in (Turn) 19 and he’s a couple car lengths back coming to the checkered and we run 1-2 or he finishes third.
“But yeah, I feel like (NASCAR will) look at all that. We’re not in those meetings. We’re not the ones deciding but they’re human. NASCAR is a bunch of humans making decisions and they’re looking at the total body of work.”
Tyler Reddick, who drives for Hamlin at 23XI Racing, said the line is pretty clear.
“It’s different for everyone but you’re never going to right (rear) hook someone to win the race, that’s for sure,” Reddick said.
Brad Keselowski said that if a decision like the one made on Wednesday wasn’t made, drivers would just push the limit of what was acceptable further and further until they were collectively told to stop.
“It’s clear that we’ll just keep moving the line, whatever that line is,” Keselowski said. “If we don’t know where the line is, we’ll just keep pushing to more and more extremes. That’s not limited to Austin. That’s just the entire industry.
“I have some sympathies for all the parties involved, whether it be NASCAR or Austin, and certainly the guys that got wrecked last week but the way the system is set up I kind of understand it.
“So that has an effect that transcends not just the Cup Series but on down and it’s something that I think that NASCAR felt a lot of pressure to react on and they did. I don’t know if I have an idea whether they made the right move or wrong move, I guess time will tell.”
Keselowski said he was surprised something so egregious hadn’t happened sooner under this championship format.
“But maybe it’s just part of a natural evolution that happens slowly over time,” Keselowski said. “But with now NASCAR interjecting, I think it’s fair to say that this would just evolve to another step. I don’t know what that would be, but it will always just keep evolving until something gets stopped.”
To wit, Keselowski said competitors will just ‘evolve’ and ‘make their peace’ by finding some other way to accomplish their goals against or beyond the accepted mores of the garage area.
“I don’t think there’s a way to have permanent solutions for everything that happens in life and sports,” Keselowski said. “I don’t know what the next thing will be. I think everybody a couple of years ago got a good kick out of Ross’ move and that was certainly an evolution of the sport, right?
“NASCAR made a point to make that kind of a one and done and I think they’re trying really hard to do that here. Something else I’m sure will pop up, as it always does.”
Keselowski said that is part of what makes NASCAR fun, the constant tug of war between rules and the responses to them.
“I think it’s unrealistic for anyone in the industry to expect NASCAR to know everything that’s going to happen before it happens,” Keselowski said. :We want them to be proactive and not reactive but they’re outnumbered significantly by people that are always trying to find new ways to beat systems.
“And in some cases, they have to be reactive and this is one of those cases in my mind.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.