Kyle Busch did not mince words about how he felt NASCAR should have handled Austin Cindric right rear hooking Ty Dillon into the frontstretch wall last week on Lap 4 at Circuit of the Americas.
“Put it in the rule book. A right hook will result in a one race suspension.”
NASCAR has established this decade that a right rear hook on an intermediate length track results in a one race suspension but has also made the precedence now that doing so under caution, like Carson Hocevar last year at Nashville, results in just a points and monetary fine.
This week, NASCAR decided that Cindric did not warrant a suspension because it was on a road course, at slower speeds, and Dillon drove away. Busch rejected that too.
“If I’m NASCAR, I do not want to be in the business of calling balls and strikes,” Busch said. “I do not want to be in that business if I’m a NASCAR official. Intent is intent.”
Busch knows from experience, having been suspended by NASCAR in 2011 for right rear hooking Ron Hornaday Jr. in a Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway in 2011.
“I did it once, maybe twice, got away with it the first time and not the second time and sat out a whole weekend the second time,” Busch said. “That’s not his first offense, and not sure if it was his second, but some people get off based off of what I think their last name is.”
That is the second time this week that Busch insinuated that Cindric got a lesser penalty only because he is the son of Team Penske executive Tim Cindric. Busch believes that intent is intent and that should have been reflected in the penalty for Cindric.
“Yeah, Bubba got it at Vegas right? I’ve had it before,” Busch said. “There are some other guys that have had it.”
That’s kind of a general consensus in the garage this past week too.
Dillon himself said earlier in the day that he expected NASCAR to have suspended Cindric. He echoed what Busch said in NASCAR getting into gray areas.
“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.”
Making this decision more complicated this season is a new for 2025 NASCAR rule that states any playoff waiver that the Sanctioning Body grants for non family or medical reasons will result in a stripping of all playoff points earned through the regular season.
Busch says everyone knows that rule, and Cindric did on Sunday too.
“You should know that going in,” Busch said. “You want to pull that move, you should know that going in.”
Denny Hamlin says NASCAR need a clear rule on this matter
“Anytime you have a new rule, there will be a cause and effect to it,” Hamlin said. “Sometimes, it’s going to seem worse than it should be and sometimes, not enough. That’s why you have to draw a line and say it doesn’t matter what the result is, a foul is a foul, and a flagrant foul is a flagrant.”
Hamlin says an intentional right rear hook is a flagrant foul.
“No matter whether we have rules or not, there’s always going to be the ‘this is how we interpreted it’ so it’s just unfortunate for victims of a situation,” Hamlin said. “But certainly, if it were my position, you judge intent. I don’t think the results should matter. It’s the intent that should matter.”
For what it’s worth, retired driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., one of the most influential voices in the sport doesn’t subscribe to this narrative, however.
“Listen, if you have a history of doing these things, NASCAR’s going to … that’s going to play in,” Earnhardt said on the Dale Jr. Download. “It’s common sense that that would play into a decision that NASCAR might make. We talked on the Dirty Air show Tuesday, and I go back and forth with this one.
“I understand what some of the drivers are saying as far as Kyle Busch and Denny (Hamlin), who are like, ‘Hey man, a right hook is a right hook. I don’t care if you’re going 10 miles an hour or 200 miles an hour, right hook is a right hook and it should all be treated the same.’ But yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if I can agree with that.”
Chase Briscoe kind of wrestled with it on Saturday.
“I guess I lean towards, caution is different than under green,” Briscoe said. “But I will say, Talladega or Martinsville, whatever, the consequence is still the same.
“The guy that gets right rear hooked is going to crash his car to a certain degree. So I definitely think that it doesn’t matter what speed you’re going or how much the car gets torn up, it’s still the intent of doing it, right?
“It’s no different than a sports game, like in a basketball, a flagrant foul is a flagrant foul no matter if it’s super egregious or if it’s just right on the borderline. The intent was there so, I don’t know.”
Joey Logano, who wasn’t going to offer a lot because Cindric is his teammate, just wants consistency from the Sanctioning Body.
“I think all of us just go and look back and say, okay, what is acceptable and what is not, and how are things called,” Logano said. “It is case by case, that is what they say. Now we know what that means. It is one thing to be written in the rule book and a lot of time it is hard to understand it because it is a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo in there, but when they make a call on something and it’s this way you expect okay next time it should look like that if it’s a similar scenario. So I guess it’s case by case.”
