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Austin Dillon instigated the incident when he rear-ended race leader Joey Logano at the penultimate turn and sent the Team Penske driver into a spin.
The chaos continued when Dillon clipped the right rear of Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin as he took the lead. Hamlin veered across the nose of Dillon and slammed into the wall.
Logano labelled the move “chicken shit” while Hamlin said a line “was crossed” by Dillon.
There has been significant consternation in the wake of the incident and NASCAR looks set to react.
“Our sport has been a contact sport for a long time,” said NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer after the incident.
“We always hear, ‘Where’s the line?’ and ‘Did someone cross the line?’ I would say that the last lap was awful close to the line.”
Richard Childress Racing has drawn criticism for comments made by Dillon’s team members, who reportedly told the #3 driver to “wreck him” before he took out Hamlin.
“We’ll take a look at all the available resources from audio to video, listen to spotters, we’ll listen to crew chiefs and drivers,” said Sawyer.
“And if anything rises to a level that we feel like we need to penalize, then we’ll do that on Tuesday (local time).”
On the incident, Sawyer said “It happened fast. But I would say, if you look at that, in my view that’s getting right up really close to crossing the line.”
Exactly what might come from the fallout is yet to be determined.
Sawyer was hesitant to suggest NASCAR would disqualify Dillon but said that the series could “learn from the incident” moving forward.
“Historically that hasn’t been our DNA to take races away, but that’s not to say that going forward this wouldn’t start to set a precedent, said Sawyer. “We have to look at it.”
Speaking on his podcast Actions Detrimental, Hamlin said NASCAR has to react otherwise they risk a repeat.
“If we allow this, this is a bad, bad way to go,” he said.
“Just wipe all your competitors out. If I were in the final four, what keeps me from just crashing all three of the guys I’m up against? When we come to a Cup race, when someone is close to another guy, just wreck them.
“You’ll say ‘Well, I did what I had to do, they’re not moving on, I am’. You can’t allow that. You are ruining the integrity of our sport. So stop is right now before it gets there.
“Because if you say that this is okay and you allow it, and you allow someone to not only get into the first round and into the playoffs, if you allow this egregious of an act, then you open up the door for someone who’s outside the cut line to just wreck someone that’s in the cut line, move on, that person is out.”
