NASCAR president Steve Phelps on Austin Dillon wreck: ‘We’re not demolition derby’

Austin Dillon caused a stir in the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway, which prompted a consequential response from NASCAR.

Coming around Turn 3 and past Turn 4 on the final lap of the race, Dillon spun leader Joey Logano and then hooked Denny Hamlin out of the lead, helping Dillon win the race and punch his ticket to the NASCAR playoffs. Days later, though, NASCAR announced that it was stripping Dillon of the automatic playoff bid, taking 25 points off his season total and suspending spotter Brandon Benesch for three races. Dillon is still credited for the win, while Logano finished 19th and Hamlin still finished second.

On the latest edition of “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour,” NASCAR president Steve Phelps explained the sport’s perspective on stripping Dillon of the automatic playoff bid.

“I’ve heard from drivers over the years, ‘I don’t know where the line is.’ ‘Tell me where the line is.’ ‘Can you show me the line?’ I’m like, ‘I can’t show you the line, but you will know when it has been crossed. So, if you hook someone going 170 mph on a mile-and-a-half track, you have crossed the line, and we’re going to park you,” Phelps told host Kevin Harvick. “We’ve been consistent. We’ve had two of those. Do we want to do that? We don’t, but we need to make sure that we are keeping our drivers safe, and when you have a situation like that, it’s not safe. I think as we were looking at the data and what happened, it happened so quickly, but you had two incidents in a split second. Turn 3 you had an incident. Turn 4 you had an incident, and then the race was concluded. 

“I think the bump-and-run or slam-and-run or whatever it was, I won’t suggest that there wouldn’t have been a penalty; I have no idea, because you had a second move, and the second move was a hook, in our opinion, which was both the eye test and the data would suggest that’s what happened. And then he put a competitor also at risk. Denny took a hard hit … there was a line that was crossed in our opinion.”

Coming off the controversial win in Richmond, Dillon finished 17th in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway last weekend. 

Dillon is 29th in total points (345) this season, with one win, one top-five finish and three top-10 finishes. There are two races remaining for Dillon to sneak into the NASCAR playoffs. Logano and Hamlin, who were in the Richmond accident, are each in the playoffs.

Phelps felt that NASCAR had to send a message about Dillon’s antics.

“If we hadn’t penalized it, then I think what we would see over the next 12 weeks would look significantly different,” Phelps said. “We just can’t have it. It really comes down to ‘what do you want your sport to be?’ And that’s why I think we ruled the way we did because we’re not demolition derby; we’re just not. We are a sport that if we had done nothing, we would’ve opened ourselves up for a mess, honestly.”

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