RICHMOND, Va. – With his driver knocked from the lead on the last lap, crew chief Paul Wolfe called foul on winner Austin Dillon while calling on NASCAR to do something about it.
“It’s just a joke to call that racing anymore,” Wolfe told Motor Racing Network’s Chris Wilner. “And at some point, it’s up to NASCAR to step up and set the precedent. What’s acceptable? And to call that acceptable, I don’t know how anyone that has watched racing for any amount of time can. To put in all the hard work and all the effort and money and what goes into this. It was a tough race, and something like that, that’s not racing. And at some point, NASCAR is going to have to make the right call on these things. And they missed it tonight with allowing that and giving that car the win.
“It’s up to NASCAR to get this under control. If NASCAR controls this, then this is never a problem. But now you get into this, ‘Oh, I owe him one,’ and that whole game. That’s not racing. At some point, we’re still a racing series, I thought. Are we just going to fill things with gimmicks and wreck people to win? That’s not right. That’s not racing.
“We all put too much into this. There’s a lot of sponsors putting a lot into this, backing us to come out here and do a professional job. That’s not professional what happened tonight. If NASCAR thinks that’s professional then we’ve really lost sight of what’s going on here.”
Dillon locked into the playoffs by ending a 68-race winless streak by first punting Joey Logano out of first and then hooking Denny Hamlin into the wall as they approached the checkered flag at Richmond Raceway.
The win was allowed to stand, though NASCAR vice president of competition Elton Sawyer said the incident would be reviewed for potential penalties Tuesday.
Sawyer said “our sport has been a contact sport for a long time. We always hear ‘Where’s the line?’ I’d say the last lap was awfully close to the line. We’ll take a look at all the available resources from audio to video, we’ll listen to spotters, crew chief and drivers, and anything rises to a level that we feel we need to penalize, we’ll do that on Tuesday.”
Dillon’s fifth career victory instantly drew scorn from the two drivers that he moved on the final lap.
Hurling multiple insults at Dillon, Logano said NASCAR should strip the win, “but they won’t.”
“It’s a joke,” said Logano, who had snatched the lead from Dillon on an overtime restart. “The whole thing’s a joke. I’ve got nothing good to say. What do you want me to do? What do you want me to tell you? I’m going to wreck him. Is that what you want me to say? I’m not going to say that. I got to go race. And I’ve got to go win.”
Hamlin also expected no action from NASCAR.
“I was just minding my own business and got hooked in the right rear,” Hamlin said. Unfortunate. It just killed our car, killed my shoulder. Tough ending for sure.
“It’s an invisible line in our rulebook. There’s provisions to cover it if NASCAR chose to do something about it, but they’re not, right? Because we’ve seen in other series and year after year, they watch things like that, and they think it’s OK, and it’s just giving a terrible example for the young group out there. But Austin goes from 30th to points to now he’s going to be in the top 16. And so no matter what repercussions he might have down the line, it doesn’t matter because it was worth it from their standpoint, which I understand that. So it’s just part of it.
“It’s hard to take some of these finishes seriously. And, you know, my parents always used to say, if you want to sit at the grown -ups table, you’ve got to act like a grown -up, and our series just has gone to a terrible place in allowing stuff like this, but this is where we’re at.”
While conceding he understood their anger (“they shouldn’t say nice things”), Dillon defended his move by saying that Hamlin and Logano had made similar moves for victories in the past.
“This is my first opportunity to get a win in two years,” the Richard Childress Racing driver said. “I mean it’s racing, and both of them have been in the other end of other things like that. It’s my first time, and man, when i get an opportunity, I just got to be aggressive.
“I see these guys do it a lot often. My move (on Logano) was pretty aggressive. (The Hamlin move) was just a reaction as I was coming back left (after hitting Logano). But man we won a race. We’ll take it. It’s what we needed.”
There were two issues that could trigger action from NASCAR:
—Radio communication on Dillon’s team channel indicated someone might have said, “Wreck him” as Dillon was driving through Hamlin, but team owner Richard Childress was adamant that no instructions were given. “I didn’t say that,” Childress said. “I didn’t hear anyone say it and I was on the radio. Everybody was quiet. We left it up to him to do his job. Hell no, nobody said, ‘Go out and wreck him, do what you got to do.’ Nobody. I was on the radio the whole time.”
—NASCAR has issued penalties for hooking a driver in the right rear as Dillon did to Hamlin. Though he conceded the bump on Logano was intentional, Dillon described the contact with Hamlin as incidental. “It was reaction,” he said. “That’s the best way I can say it. What do you think the sport science would be? It was super fast. So the ‘mean to’ was definitely to move (Logano). The rest just was whatever my body did.”
Childress was unrepentant about the winning move by Dillon, noting that he had coached his grandson “all his life” to drive the No. 3 Chevrolet to “do what it takes” to win.
“They would do it to him, I promise you,” Childress said. “If he would have been leading it, that (Logano) would have moved him out of the way. (Hamlin) would have moved him out of the way.
“Either one of them would have done the same thing. I’ve seen it before. ... Just prepare yourself is all I can say. It’s a two-way street. If you kick a dog, he might bite you, but you might get bit again yourself.”