Van Gisbergen made contact with the back of Hill during Stage 1 of the 267-lap race and turned the Richard Childress Racing car into a spin, ending his day just shy of the 50-lap mark.
Austin Hill said “If I have to explain it, people probably need to get glasses,” while his eponymous team boss, Richard Childress, said the hit was “blatant” and payback for a previous run-in.
The clash involving van Gisbergen and Hill has been a particularly popular point of discussion in the days after, with debate centred on whether NASCAR should intervene.
Van Gisbergen said there was no intent behind the contact, though NASCAR veteran Jamie McMurray claimed data showed “undeniable” proof to suggest otherwise. Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin suggested the move was premeditated.
Ultimately, the incident was unpenalised. Forde explained that NASCAR conducted a thorough data analysis of the lap in question, laps leading up to the incident, and even earlier to see if there had been another unseen incident.
“We have several folks in race control that held a steering wheel. When we saw what we saw, it raised the flag of ‘Hey, that is questionable at best’, so we started reviewing immediately,” said Forde on NASCAR podcast Hauler Talk.
“We went through all the radio transmissions to see if there was anything that rose the red flag and was the smoking gun. Nothing in our eyes proved definitive.
“There was nothing definitive that said this is 100 percent intentional, penalty-worthy, need to put a stop to this. Certainly questionable.”
Another incident, which was not broadcast, involved Hill hitting van Gisbergen after going back onto the track.
Forde said NASCAR looked at that as “emotion” in the moment and was happy to let it go.
A bone of contention has been that incident earlier this year between Ryan Preece and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Ty Gibbs wound up with the RFK Racing driver being sanctioned.
In that instance, radio chatter and post-race comments confirmed to NASCAR that Preece intentionally wrecked Gibbs.
“We have a pretty consistent history of if you say you’re going to do it and then do it, that is going to rise to the level of a penalty,” said Forde.
“You’ve removed any kind of doubt. Here, there’s enough reasonable doubt where it didn’t rise to the penalty for us here.
“If you remove that reasonable doubt, then you’re going to get a penalty.”
NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer has already spoken to Hill and will bring him and van Gisbergen together at the upcoming Cup Series race to discuss the clash.
“Certainly there is hot heads with these two folks that we want to have a discussion about and make sure that it doesn’t boil over into a significant problem at Atlanta or beyond,” said Forde.
“So we plan to have that conversation on Saturday. That’s where we are.”
Van Gisbergen and Hill have history with each other dating back more than a year.
They first clashed at Circuit of the Americas in 2024 in the then-known NASCAR Xfinity Series (now NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series) in an incident that did not sit well with SVG.
Hill pointed the middle finger out of his car after van Gisbergen won at Sonoma that year and performed a burnout next to him.
This year, Hill was part of the trigger that caused van Gisbergen to crash at Pocono.
Then, at San Diego, Hill began a pile-up that took van Gisbergen and his Trackhouse teammate Connor Zilisch out.
NASCAR said it considers previous clashes, but did not in this instance. However, moving forward, Forde said it would take a dim view of future incidents.
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