NASCAR banned crew members and delivered nearly $1 million in fines across three teams for the infamous scenes at Martinsville Speedway.
There was speculation that Chevrolet had been pulling strings to manipulate the result of the second-to-last race at Martinsville.
A radio message “from Chevrolet” to Kaulig Racing’s Shane van Gisbergen suggested as much, although the Bowtie brand went unsanctioned.
With the sanctions, NASCAR vice president of competition Elton Sawyer foreshadowed tougher penalties if there were similar scenes at Phoenix Raceway.
Now, this year’s champion Logano has detailed serious conversations in the lead-up to the season finale that put the drivers on notice.
“They did threaten us before the race that if anyone manipulated the race somehow, you are not racing in the Daytona 500 next year,” said Logano on Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour.
“Is that a threat? Is that real? This playoffs system is a big piece of it and who do you answer to? That’s the question you have to ask. Who do you answer to? Whoever signed your paycheque, that’s who you answer to.
“If Chevy or Ford or Toyota are stroking these big cheques and say ‘Hey, it’s very important to have our car in the Championship 4 and we fund a lot of your stuff, you better do the right thing’ what are you going to do?
“You’re backed up against the wall. And that backs NASCAR up against the wall. I don’t know how to fix it.”
Logano said NASCAR was justified in sanctioning the teams – Trackhouse Racing (Chevrolet), Richard Childress Racing (Chevrolet), and 23XI Racing (Toyota) – for the act.
“First off, I think NASCAR did the right thing by doing something. They had to,” said Logano.
“If you let that go it will continue to grow. Going into Phoenix the next weekend after something like that… It’s going to be everybody saying to hell with their race and they’re going to be blocking everybody. So NASCAR is put in a spot where they have to do something.”
Logano said there is still a level of ambiguity and issues around trying to prove whether a team actively manipulated a race result.
It’s an issue that the three-time champion is concerned could be easily covered up in the future.
“Now, it gets tricky for NASCAR I believe because how do you prove it? The #20, pretty easy to see. He rode the wall, you can’t do that. That’s a black-and-white rule. Easy call. The others, easy call because you heard them talking on the radio. That communication over the radio was pretty obvious,” Logano explained.
“If there wasn’t that communication on the radio, how do you make that call? That gets pretty tough. It’s pretty obvious to the naked eye what was going on, even though there was nothing ever said. I saw it happen in front of me.
“If they didn’t say it on the radio, are they going to make that call though? I don’t know. But we had to do something or else we were going to look like F1, and that ain’t what we are. That’s not who we’re going to be. We have to do something. What makes them just have the meetings beforehand and they do it anyway?”
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