Austin Dillon will keep his victory from Sunday night’s Cup race at Richmond Raceway, but it will not count toward playoff eligibility for the driver and car owner, NASCAR stated Wednesday afternoon.
The move leaves Dillon and the No. 3 team outside a playoff spot with three races left in the regular season.
Richard Childress Racing stated that it “is very disappointed in NASCAR’s penalty against the No. 3 team. We do not agree with the decision that was made and plan to appeal.”
NASCAR also announced that Dillon has been docked 25 points and the team also lost 25 car owner points. NASCAR stated that spotter Brandon Beseech, who could be heard yelling for Dillon to wreck a competitor, has been suspended for the next three Cup races.
“The No. 1 thing is that we want to make sure that we’re protecting the integrity of our playoffs as well as the championship when we get to Phoenix,” Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, told reporters Wednesday.
“We want to make sure our competitors understand that we want them to make all the decisions, we want them to be able to race hard. That’s what our sport has been about for 75-plus years, but we also want them to understand — and I believe each and every one them understands that this crossed the line.”
Sawyer said NASCAR examined SMT data, in-car camera footage and team radio audio before making the decision. He declined to state if one action by Dillon was more egregious than the other when he wrecked both Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin on the final lap to win.
“We looked at it from the totality of everything that happened there as the (No.) 3 entered Turn 3 and made contact with (Logano) ... and the contact that was made with (Dillon) and (Hamlin) on the exit.”
Dillon won at Richmond after making contact with Logano and Hamlin on the final lap. Dillon ran into the back of Logano, which sent Logano’s car spinning into the wall. Dillon then made contact with the right rear of Hamlin’s car, which sent it into the wall, before taking the checkered flag.
Sawyer said that officials considered taking the win away but the Cup Rule Book does not provide a “mechanism” to do so. He also said that series officials did consider suspending him — as officials did to Chase Elliott in 2023 and Bubba Wallace in 2022 for incidents where they wrecked a competitor by hooking them in the right rear — but chose not to do so, saying the penalty issued was severe enough.
Dillon’s penalty means that 12 drivers have secured a playoff spot with a win, leaving four spots via points. Instead of Wallace holding the final playoff spot, Chris Buescher moves up to that position based on a tiebreaker with Ross Chastain. The series races next on Sunday at Michigan International Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on USA Network).
Sawyer also explained why it took so long to make this decision instead of doing so after the race.
“Ultimately we would like to and we will get to a place where we’re making this more on the spot, if you will,” Sawyer said. “We wanted to make sure, the most important thing in these decisions is to get it right. To make a split-second decision and it be wrong, that would be bad on our part. As stewards of the sport, the amount of time it took, in this case getting it right vs. being fast on the decision, it was more important to take the time to get it correct. But it does put us I would say in a position that we’re looking hard at how we could have done this in a much faster manner.”
Dillon gave his side of the last lap after Sunday night’s race at Richmond.
“I got Joey loose, I downshifted to come back left,” Dillon said after the race about the contact with the two drivers. “(Hamlin) is coming across. I’m just wide open at that point when he comes across. Trying to get to the start/finish line first.”
Dillon went on to say: “I’m just looking at the start/finish line. That’s it. I ain’t hearing (expletive) at that point, you know? Your eyes turn red. You see red, you get to the end of the race. Daytona, last lap when I won there at the 500, your eyes see red.
“There’s one thing on your mind — get to the start/finish line first, period. No matter if anybody came on the radio, it doesn’t matter. Like, you have one job to do, it’s to get to the start/finish line first.
“A lot of people lose their jobs because they don’t get to the start/finish line first.”
NASCAR let the results stand Sunday night, although Sawyer told reporters after the race that Dillon’s actions came “awful close to the line.”
On the topic of if Dillon should have the win taken away, Hamlin said on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast this week: “You can basically say to everyone that we deem that as not a racing incident, that it was intentional. It altered the finish of the race, therefore this person does not deserve to win.”
NASCAR also announced that it had fined Logano $50,000 for for the mini burnout he did in Dillon’s pit area after the race with team members and others on pit road.