History will record that Austin Dillon won Sunday's NASCAR event at Richmond Raceway. Not just in the way that history recalls John Calipari leading the University of Massachusetts to the Final Four in 1996 despite the NCAA insisting it never happened; NASCAR will make no move to revoke Dillon's victory, even though the manner in which it was achieved has been widely denounced. NASCAR's official response, announced Wednesday, is somehow even more brutal: Dillon has been stripped of his playoff berth and docked a further 25 points for "action(s) detrimental to stock car auto racing or NASCAR." NASCAR didn't Mickey Mouse-ify the whole race—everyone else who competed gets to keep their points—but they did rather severely Mickey Mouse-ify the winner.
It is the opinion of NASCAR officials that while rubbing remains racing, Dillon's actions in the final two turns at Richmond constituted more than rubbing, something more like ramming. Ramming is bad. Dillon copped to deliberately driving his car into the rear bumper of Joey Logano on the race's penultimate turn, and then described a split-second reaction that led to him pulling a PIT maneuver on the car of Denny Hamlin. Logano's car was turned entirely around and sent spinning into the barrier; Hamlin was able to careen across the finish line and salvage a second-place finish. It was all too much for NASCAR, which cannot abide a driver behaving with the outta my way desperation of George Costanza escaping a fire, in order to win a race. "We looked at this and the totality of everything that happened as you enter Turn 3 and as the cars got to the start/finish line,” said Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition. “So, as we look through all of that data, we came to the conclusion that a line had been crossed. Our sport has been based going for many, many years, forever, on good, hard racing. Contact has been acceptable. We felt like, in this case, that the line was crossed.”
NASCAR's rulebook say that race finishes "must be unencumbered by violation(s) of the NASCAR Rules." By tradition, though, NASCAR does not revoke victories, preferring that fans always know who won a race by who crossed the finish line first. This ruling appears designed to uphold tradition, reinforce both the spirit and letter of the law, and satisfy race fans who might've been disgusted by Dillon's performance. Dillon gets to keep the victory, but it has been retroactively stripped of any real meaning, and while NASCAR's ruling stops short of formally disqualifying Dillon from the playoffs, the additional points penalty makes it that much more of a long-shot. Truly, the man has had his ass kicked.
NASCAR also suspended Dillon's spotter, whose role is to sit atop the grandstand and serve as an extra set of eyes, for three Cup Series races. Brandon Benesch was recorded over the team radio shouting "Wreck him" into Dillon's ear in the moments before Dillon cut across the track on the final turn and wiped out Hamlin. In general, you want to avoid urging someone to drive their car into another person's car at high speeds, and you want to make extra sure not to do it when audio of that advice will be reviewed by the organizing body of your profession. “If you look at the crew chief and you look at the spotter, and view them as calming voices in the driver’s ear, in this case, we just felt like we’ve all listened to the audio," explained Sawyer. "We know exactly what was said. We just felt like that’s not what we need spotters doing."
Dillon's team is not happy with the ruling, which leaves them with just three races left on the calendar from which to gain an elusive and official win. Richard Childress Racing announced Wednesday that they plan to appeal. They should consider themselves lucky they didn't have to, uh, peel their driver off the asphalt following a huge violent wreck, with behavior like that.
