NASCAR president Steve Phelps said the sport is not a “demolition derby” when discussing the finish at Richmond Raceway, and the subsequent decision to penalize winner Austin Dillon, with Kevin Harvick.
The interview was filmed for Harvick’s podcast on Fox Sports. It took place before the National Motorsports Appeals Panel denied Richard Childress Racing’s appeal for Dillon and the No. 3 team after his Cup Series playoff eligibility from the victory was stripped because of the contact Dillon made with Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin on the final lap.
Dillon had one of his best performances at Richmond, with a sixth-place qualifying effort and 35 laps led. He was pulling away from the field in the final laps before a caution set up overtime. Logano beat Dillon through Turns 1 and 2 on the first lap of overtime, but Dillon drove into Turn 3 and spun Logano on the final lap. He then right-hooked Hamlin in Turn 4 to secure the victory.
It took NASCAR three days to review the incident before penalizing Dillon. Not only were the perks of the victory taken away, but his team was also docked 25 points in both the drivers’ and owners’ championship standings. Brandon Benesch, Dillon’s spotter, was suspended for three weeks for his radio communication during the final lap, but the appeals panel reduced the penalty to one week.
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“If we hadn’t penalized him, I think what we would see over the next 12 weeks would be 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 [a] demolition derby. We’re just not. We’re a sport that if we had done nothing, we would have opened ourselves up for a mess, honestly.”
Childress is making a final appeal because the organization said in a statement it doesn’t believe the outcome reflects the facts presented. The final appeal will be heard Monday morning.
Dillon was 32nd in the championship standings going into Richmond. Unless the final appeal goes in Dillon’s favor, he needs a win at Daytona International Speedway (Saturday, 7:30pm ET, NBC) or the regular season finale at Darlington Raceway (Sept. 1) to secure a spot in the postseason.
“We don’t want to penalize drivers,” Phelps said. “We don’t want to have cars not pass tech. All of that, we don’t want. But there is a responsibility, if you’re going to be fair about the rules that you’re going to put in place and then officiate, that you have to do it with the utmost integrity, and I believe that our officials right now — Elton Sawyer and his team — they have the utmost integrity.
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t believe that Elton Sawyer doesn’t have the most integrity of someone that’s in his position. So, the decision … each of those is unique, and we have to treat it as unique.”
Phelps explained the NASCAR competition department reviewed the finish from Richmond before recommending a penalty. Their decision then goes to NASCAR’s upper management — including Phelps, NASCAR chairman and CEO Jim France, and COO Steve O’Donnell — for review. However, unless the group feels it is “significantly wrong,” the decision won’t be overturned.
“The difficulty as it relates to this specific incident, 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?’” Phelps said. “I can’t show you the line, but you will know when it’s been crossed. So, if you hook someone going 170 miles per hour on a mile-and-a-half track, you have crossed the line and we’re going to park you. And 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.
“Again, 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 had an incident; Turn 4 had an incident and the race was concluded. I think the bump and run or slam and run, whatever it was, I won’t suggest 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 as well as the data would suggest that happened.
“It’s hard to hide from the data. Then he put a competitor at risk. Denny took a hard hit, one of the hardest hits I think he’s had in this Next Gen car. There was a line that was crossed, in our opinion.”