NASCAR Driver Stripped Of Playoff Eligibility After Last-Lap Crash

It’s lap 399 of 400. After a late-race restart under the lights of Richmond Speedway, you’ve just lost the lead to a bitter rival. You haven’t won a NASCAR Cup Series race since 2022 and currently sit 32nd in the points standings. Your grandfather, legendary team owner Richard Childress, is watching from pit road as your iconic #3 Chevrolet sweeps down the banking of turn four to take the white flag. Should you simply watch another chance at a playoff-securing win slip away? Or take matters into your own hands…?

This was the decision that 34-year-old North Carolina native Austin Dillon was presented with last night in Virginia as he saw Joey Logano’s #22 Penske Ford sprint towards victory. Dillon made his choice and, predictably, chaos ensued.

First Dillon went long on the brakes, sliding into Logano’s rear corner to push him up the racetrack and towards the wall. As both leading cars lost pace, Denny Hamlin’s #11 JGR car must have seen the headlines as he kept the foot flat to the floor to usurp the victory after leading 124 laps across the night. Those headlines, though, were quickly rewritten as Dillon swept back to the low line and wrecked him too before going on to take the chequered flag by 0.116 seconds.

Now, for the most part, this sort of driving is par for the course in NASCAR. There is no direct rule against contact on track, or wrecking another driver for your own gain as long as the danger level of the crash doesn’t reach into violence. 

Immediately after the race, Logano was rightfully incensed by the injustice of the incident:

‘It’s chicken s**t. There’s no doubt about it. He is four car lengths back, not even close.  Then he wrecks the #11 to go along with it… It’s a bunch of BS. It’s not even freakin’ close.’

Logano rushed over to the race direction truck to plead his case. Though initially pleas seemingly fell on deaf ears, NASCAR vowed to investigate all available data and come to a decision in the days following the race.

On Wednesday 14 August, NASCAR announced sporting penalties for Austin Dillon and the Richard Childress Racing team. Though Dillon would technically retain the win, both driver and team were stripped of the accompanying 25 Cup Series championship points as well as his playoff eligibility on account of the manner in which the win was achieved.

#3 Car spotter Brandon Benesch has also been suspended for NASCAR’s next three race weekends. Joey Logano has been fined $50,000 for ‘compromising the safety of others’ as he aggressively parked up in pitlane following the wreck.

In a statement to the media NASCAR’s senior VP of competition, Elton Sawyer explained the decision:

‘Our sport has been based going, for many, many years, forever, on good, hard racing. Contact has been acceptable. We felt like, in this case, that the line was crossed.’

Alongside the regulatory grey area on contact between cars in the sport, there is also no rule, or very minimal enforcement of any rule, against settling these interpersonal disagreements with a classic playground scrap rather than the bitter passive aggression we’re used to in European open-wheel classes. We’ve seen many over the years.

Wednesday’s penalty draws a key line in the sand for the rest of the year. Now back to a lowly 31st in the standings after the points deduction, Dillon has only three remaining weekends to secure a playoff spot; three weekends that his spotter will be suspended for. The series gets back underway this weekend at Michigan International Speedway with the Firekeepers Casino 400.