Austin Dillon’s Richmond penalty warranted to keep playoffs from lawlessness

The biggest question NASCAR had to address when determining if and how to penalize Austin Dillon: How does it prevent a driver vying for the championship from doing what Dillon did to win at Richmond in order to win the title.

That’s why NASCAR penalized Dillon the way it did, revoking his playoff status for the win. It doesn’t want a driver wrecking two others, including a right rear hook, to win a title. Rubbing might be racing. Turning a driver might be racing — dirty racing but in that murky area of what’s acceptable and what’s not. Crashing two drivers is not, at least in most eyes.

The Dillon turn of Joey Logano was dirty and difficult to stomach, but if that was all that occurred for Dillon to win at Richmond, NASCAR likely would have kept its no-call swallowed whistle from Sunday night in its stomach.

But the hook of Hamlin just went too far. The only question was whether it was intentional, a miscalculation or a racing incident with Dillon just hammering his throttle trying to get to the finish line and whatever happens, happens.

To get a clearer picture on that, NASCAR wanted to see data. But why did it take nearly three days to make the decision?

The move was egregious enough that NASCAR could have penalized Dillon on the spot and then rule on an almost-certain protest. 

Instead, NASCAR went through the measured steps of making a decision. There is something to be said about getting it right but there also is something about making a call in the moment and living with it. Or at least not let the entire sport — and the social media swirl of commentary and speculation — left to wonder for more than 65 hours.

Would a decision in the moment be unfair to Dillon? Maybe. But if he didn’t want to put it in NASCAR hands, he could have not lost the lead on the restart. He could have made the move a little less egregious (of course then maybe he doesn’t win). But the fact is, he put it in NASCAR’s hands to make a decision.

Was it the right one?

It will work. It will tell drivers that if you want to win to capture the trophy, that’s OK, but it’s not going to get you anywhere in the playoffs.

I would have been good with a 50-point penalty — if that happens at Phoenix, then there is no way for a driver to finish ahead of the others — as well as possibly a suspension for the first race of the next playoff round. So it virtually puts a driver in position to need to win one of two races to advance (and a caveat that if it happens again, there is no advancement).

But the most important part is that NASCAR has sent a message to others in the Cup Series and possibly other national series of just how far they can go for a win. Maybe it should just be surprising that something like Dillon’s move hasn’t been seen earlier when the elimination-style format began in 2014. 

There also will be talk about what type of example does this set for young drivers coming through the ranks? But Cup racing is unlike most others because of the money involved.

That might be why the win wasn’t taken away. Las Vegas had paid the bets already.

With such high stakes, there might be reason to have a little more latitude, that the knowledge that paybacks will come on the track in what is still somewhat a self-policing sport.

But with the high stakes and the format comes the spotlight on NASCAR officials. They got the call right. They could have saved a lot of headaches by doing it a few days ago.

Full coverage of Richmond fallout:

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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