NASCAR President Defends Austin Dillon Penalty – ‘Not Demolition Derby’

NASCAR President Steve Phelps has defended the penalties levied on Richard Childress Racing driver Austin Dillon after controversial moves at Richmond Raceway.

During the last lap of the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway, Dillon intentionally crashed into race leader Joey Logano, which subsequently resulted in a collision with Denny Hamlin, to take the lead.

The aggressive move resulted in a hefty penalty for the driver with his playoff eligibility which had been secured in Richmond taken away and a 25-point reduction for him and the team. In addition, his spotter, Brandon Benesch, faced a three-race suspension, although this was later reduced to one race.

NASCAR President Steve Phelps has spoken about the incident during an episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour. This comes after Richard Childress Racing confirmed it would be looking to further escalate its appeal after it was initially denied. Phelps explained, as quoted by FOX Sports:

“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.

“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.”

Phelps strongly defended the decision to penalize Dillon, stating:

“If we hadn’t penalized it, then I think what we would see over the next 12 weeks would look significantly different.

“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.”