Corey LaJoie will not be penalized for the contact with Kyle Busch during Sunday’s race at Pocono Raceway.
NASCAR viewed the incident as hard racing but did review it with all the appropriate data Tuesday. Brad Moran, the Cup Series managing editor, told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio the incident “got some folks attention.” LaJoie hit Busch in the left rear going into Turn 1 on a restart with 40 laps to go, which spun Busch to the apron before his car came back across the racetrack and collected other drivers.
Moran’s comments about the incident getting attention raised the ire of fans on social media who claimed NASCAR is policing the sport based on internet reaction. The sentiment was born after Denny Hamlin said over the weekend that NASCAR fining Bubba Wallace $50,000 following the Chicago race when he ran into Alex Bowman on the cooldown lap came because of how much attention it got. The incident was caught on the television broadcast and was highly publicized.
“It got our attention to focus on it,” NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer clarified to reporters Tuesday afternoon about the LaJoie and Busch incident.
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NASCAR has issued several penalties for driver conduct in recent weeks. Wallace was fined the Wednesday following Chicago. It came a week after Carson Hocevar was fined and docked points (on a Tuesday) for hooking Harrison Burton at Nashville Superspeedway.
However, there was also an in-race penalty at Nashville. Craftsman Truck Series driver Layne Riggs was held for two laps for reckless driving after contact with Stefan Parsons.
“In the tower when that happened, I mentioned to Seth Kramlich, the series director, that you need to talk to Layne and Stephen,” Sawyer explained. “He said, ‘Well, I already talked to Layne.’ I said, ‘Well, the next step is to hold him for two laps.’ So, the next step (after that) is he’ll probably be in the bucket with Carson, which will be his pocketbook.
“Yeah, we review these. We would prefer to wait and get all the data, all the footage, all the audio so we’re making the right decision. That’s not to say in Cup that we wouldn’t hold someone for laps or multiple laps.”
Sawyer also addressed the calls for consistency in officiating, saying he could mention other incidents where he believes officials have been consistent. However, he also stressed that every incident is different and needs to be viewed as such. It was why Wallace was penalized after Chicago, but Chase Elliott was not even though Elliott was also frustrated with a driver after the race.
“Two completely different scenarios,” Sawyer said. “We had a conversation with Chase about, the race is over, so we’ve completed the event. Both of these scenarios are post checkered flag and Chase accelerates to get up to (Daniel Suarez). We’ve seen that for many, many years, drivers showing their displeasure when the race is over. We reviewed (with) in-car cameras, looked at all the footage, audio, and [it was] very slight contact. And that rises to a level where we don’t really want to be in the middle of any of that. That’s how we made a decision on that one.”
Wallace, however, had time to cool down after his initial incident with Bowman during the race. It occurred on lap 25, and then there was a nearly two-hour red flag for rain before the race was completed. After all that time, Wallace ran into Bowman.
“[There were] many laps to think about a decision you need to make post-race and the decision that was made was to go up and do what (Bowman) did,” Sawyer said. “The right front tire comes off the ground on the No.48, and the left side hits the wall. Window nets are down. If you look at the in-car camera, seatbelts (were coming off) in the No.48 car. Again, they are completely different.”
Sawyer said it rose to a level that NASCAR does not want to happen between competitors. Then comes the LaJoie incident, which occurred during competition, and NASCAR didn’t feel escalated to anything further.
“We’re in race,” Sawyer said. “We’ve got two guys racing hard. You listen to the in-car audio on (LaJoie), [we] don’t hear anything from the driver. There are some comments made by the crew chief and spotter, which neither one of them are driving the car.
“We plan to have a conversation with Corey to make sure he’s in a good place there. But that one, in-race, we let the guys race.”