The NASCAR Cup Series arrives at Michigan International Speedway for its lone 2024 race in Sunday’s Firekeepers Casino 400, but it is hard to put Richmond’s wacky race results to rest.
Richmond Raceway, dubbed “The Action Track,” changed the whole course of the sport Sunday night and created a maelstrom of opinions within the racing community after its bizarre conclusion.
At the finish off the final turn, Austin Dillon knocked leader Joey Logano out of the way then right-hooked Denny Hamlin, who had passed Dillon, to put Hamlin’s No. 11 into the outside wall.
Riding 32nd in points and desperate to win, Dillon was declared victorious and appeared to earn a berth in the 16-car championship chase.
Of course, none of this mess would have happened if Ricky Stenhouse Jr. had not wrecked Ryan Preece with Dillon leading in the final laps before the overtime and safely heading to his first victory since Aug. 28, 2022 at Daytona.
But if that did not happen, fans would have been denied the most controversial finish in years.
Dillon’s excessive aggressiveness created a tough situation for NASCAR: What is the line that results in some kind of penalty, perhaps even disqualification, if a driver crosses it?
In 1991 at Sears Point, Ricky Rudd spun leader Davey Allison nearing the white flag, and NASCAR stripped Rudd of the win by showing him the black flag and giving the checkers to Allison when they came back around the road course.
Rudd’s contact was pretty similar to Dillon’s on Logano, which is a move a fan at any local short track is sure to see on some weekend, possibly with the victory being wrested from the offending party.
However, Dillon’s later deliberate move against Hamlin was a more serious and potentially dangerous offense.
The higher-ups had trouble justifying the finish.
“I would say that the last lap was awful close to the line,” Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, said following the race.
Hamlin’s podcast became a bully pulpit.
“If we allow this, this is a bad, bad way to go,” said Hamlin, who has been on the giving end of various on-track run-ins, on his podcast “Actions Detrimental.” “Because at Phoenix, just wipe all your competitors out. Like if I were in the final four, what keeps me from crashing all three of the guys I’m up against?
“You’ll say, ‘I did what I had to do.'”
On Wednesday, NASCAR pivoted and made a landmark decision after viewing the SMT telemetry from Dillon’s car, deeming he went too far.
It allowed the win to stand, officially ending Dillon’s 68-race winless streak, but it revoked the championship eligibility from the driver of the iconic No. 3 and docked him 25 points.
“As we looked at the data, we came to the conclusion that the line had been crossed,” Sawyer said after reviewing the footage.
So Sawyer and company set the line that a competitor cannot be a dangerous bowling ball wiping out pins on his way to the checkers.
NASCAR had to strike on this one.
–Field Level Media