How far is too far to win a Cup race? Decisions loom for NASCAR, drivers

RICHMOND, Va. — The line of acceptable racing contact has never been all that defined in racing.

Often it’s termed as “we’ll know it when we see it.”

Well, what did people see Sunday night at Richmond Raceway?

They saw Austin Dillon run into the back of Joey Logano and then hook Denny Hamlin in the final turns for a spot in the playoffs.

“We’re in the Chase,” said Dillon’s car owner and grandfather, Richard Childress, using the former name of the NASCAR playoffs. “I don’t know where you’re trying to draw the line.”

NASCAR has created a playoff system where it promotes winning at pretty much all costs. If a driver who competes in all 26 regular-season races earns a win in any of those 26, the driver makes the playoffs as long as there aren’t more winners than the 16 spots available in the playoff field.

In the playoffs, which features primarily three-race rounds, a playoff driver advances to the next round with a win in any of those three events.

So the system encourages a “wild, wild west” type of racing where drivers must go to the brink of what would be considered legal in the racing world.

“It’s just the rules of the sport, right?” Dillon said following the controversial win. “It is what it is. Wins get you into the next round. I did what I had to do to cross the start-finish line first.

“As far as good for the sport, I heard we were trending No. 1 on Twitter right now.”

Hamlin finished second, and the result didn’t just impact his chance to earn some playoff points. It also could keep Bubba Wallace, who drives for the team Hamlin co-owns, out of the playoffs as now at most three winless drivers can make the playoffs.

“I hate the words — and sometimes the media says it, ‘He did what he had to do,'” Hamlin said. “That is way over the top in my opinion.”

NASCAR has left the door open to penalizing Dillon. The fact that it didn’t do so in the moment would indicate that it didn’t feel it saw anything initially that it would consider worth penalizing him to take away the win. Typically, a penalty in that situation for over-aggressive driving would be the driver being placed to the tail end of the lead lap.

NASCAR will review any instructions given to Dillon by his team and also look at Dillon’s throttle, steering and braking data to see how much was intentional and what was not. It left the door open for still issuing a penalty that could impact the results of the race, but it likely could result in fines or a points penalty — which wouldn’t impact the playoffs.

“Our sport has been a contact sport for a long time,” said NASCAR Senior Vice President Elton Sawyer. “We always hear [about] where’s the line, and someone crossed the line.”

And what would Sawyer say about that one?

“It happened fast,” Sawyer said. “But I would say, if you look at that, in my view, that’s getting right up really close to crossing the line.”

Logano advocated for Dillon to be penalized but said he didn’t think NASCAR would do so.

“Apparently, it’s OK,” Logano said. “What do you want me to say? Apparently, he can come from five car lengths back and completely wreck someone and then wreck another one to the line.

“And we’re going to call that racing? Cool.”

Hamlin had no doubt it was egregious.

“I got right-rear hooked,” Hamlin said. “I got hooked in the right rear 100 percent. I don’t know what the G[-forces] were, but it crushed me on the right side.

“He right-rear hooked me. … There was a two-lap penalty for Layne Riggs that spun somebody out in a truck race [earlier this year], but we’re going to say that that’s fine?”

There is a difference in some ways of racing to the line in a Cup race versus fighting for one spot in the trucks. Dillon, for his part, said it was just a reaction when he saw Hamlin on the inside of him as they went for the win. Dillon’s spotter, in a whirlwind of instructions in the heat of the moment did say “wreck him” a couple of times, but Dillon said he did not hear the directive.

“I am sideways off of [Turn] 4 because I’m already three-quarters of the lane up the track — hammer the gas. I’m just looking at the start-finish line,” Dillon said. “That’s it. I ain’t hearing s— at that point, you know?

“Your eyes turn red. You see red. You get to the end of the race.”

The finish certainly had several drivers seeing red.

“Racing hard for the win is one thing,” said Tyler Reddick, who drives for Hamlin and finished third. “Just plainly right hooking somebody is another. That sounds pretty biased coming from me about my boss, but if I was in his spot, I would be pretty upset about it too.

“They put so much emphasis on winning races, people are going to lose their minds and just do ridiculous stuff.”

As Dillon said, drivers get fired for not winning the races and making the playoffs.

“I’ve seen Denny and Joey make moves that have been running people up the track to win,” Dillon said. “This is the first opportunity in two years for me to be able to get a win. I drove in there and kept all four tires turning across the start-finish line. 

“To me, I’ve seen a lot of stuff over the years in NASCAR where people move people. It’s just part of our sport. You know what I mean? Remember when Joey said ‘short-track racing’? He knows what it was.”

What does Logano know? He knows he will have to react if NASCAR doesn’t. And he’ll have to try to do it in a way that doesn’t get himself in NASCAR’s doghouse.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,” Logano said. “But I know it’s ridiculous. You can’t stand for it, I’ll tell you that much.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. Obviously, I’ll think about it, but it’s you can’t let s— like that happen.”

The message, Hamlin said, is for a driver such as Wallace who is on the playoff bubble to race in a similar fashion.

“He could just wipe people out to get in, and there’s no rules that prohibit it,” Hamlin said. “And we’ve gotten here because this is what we’ve set up. … My parents used to say if you want to sit at the adult table, you have to act like an adult.

“And we just don’t as a sport sometimes. And it’s just frustrating.”

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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