Austin Dillon will retain his win in Sunday night’s Cup race at Richmond Raceway, but it will not count toward driver and car owner playoff eligibility, NASCAR said Wednesday afternoon.
The move comes with three races remaining in the regular season, with Dillon and the No. 3 leaving the team out of a playoff spot.
Richard Childress Racing said, “We are very disappointed with the NASCAR penalty against the No. 3 team. We disagree with the decision and plan to appeal.
NASCAR announced that Dillon was docked 25 points and the team lost 25 car owner points. NASCAR also announced that spotter Brandon Besich, who could be heard yelling at Dillon to destroy a rival, has been suspended for the next three Cup races.
“The No. 1 thing is we want to make sure we protect the integrity of our playoffs and the championship when we come to Phoenix,” NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer told reporters Wednesday.
“We want to make sure that we want our competitors to make all the decisions, we want them to race hard. This has been our sport for 75-plus years, but we want them to understand – and every single one of them understands – that this is over the line. I believe that.
Sawyer said NASCAR reviewed SMT data, in-car camera footage and team radio audio before making the decision. He declined to say whether one of Dillon’s actions was worse than the other when he passed both Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin on the final lap to take the win.
“(No.) 3 going into Turn 3 with (Logano) … and the contact made with (Dillon) and (Hamlin) on the exit and we looked at everything that happened there. .”
Dillon won at Richmond after 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, sending it into the wall before taking the checkered flag.
Sawyer said the officials considered taking the hit, but the Cup rulebook did not provide a “mechanism” for doing so. He also said series officials were considering suspending him — as officials did for Chase Elliott in 2023 and Bubba Wallace in 2022 for incidents in which he laced a competitor in the right rear and disfigured them. That was harsh enough.
Dillon’s penalty means 12 drivers have clinched a playoff spot with one win, and four by points. Instead of Wallace grabbing the final playoff spot, Chris Buescher advanced to that spot based on a tiebreaker with Rose Chastain. The series begins next Sunday at Michigan International Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on the USA Network).
Sawyer also explained why it took so long to make this decision instead of doing it after the race.
“Eventually we want to, if you will, get to a place where we do more of this on the spot,” Sawyer said. “We wanted to make sure, the most important thing in these decisions is to get it right. If the split second decision is wrong, it’s bad for us. As stewards of the game, the amount of time it takes, in this case getting it right versus being quick to make a decision, the time to get it right. Allocation is very important, but it puts us in a position, I would say, where we look hard at how we could have done this much faster.
Dillon gave his side for the last lap after Sunday night’s race at Richmond.
“I let Joey loose and I shifted to come back to the left,” Dillon said after the race about the contact with the two drivers. “(Hamlin) comes across. I’m open when he comes across. I try to get to the start/finish line first.
Dillon continued: “I look at the start/finish line. That’s it. I didn’t ask at the time (elaborate), you know? Your eyes will turn red. You see red and you get the end of the race. Daytona, when I won the 500 on the last lap, your eyes looked red.
“You have one thing on your mind – the start/finish line first, period. It doesn’t matter if someone comes on the radio. You have one job to do, get to the start/finish line first.
“A lot of people lose their jobs because they don’t get to the start/finish line in the first place.”
NASCAR let Sunday night’s results stand, though Sawyer told reporters after the race that Dillon’s actions came “too bad for the line.”
On the topic of whether Dillon should have won, Hamlin said on his “Detrimental Acts” podcast this week: “You can tell everybody that we believe this was not a racing incident, it was intentional. It changed the outcome of the race, so this guy doesn’t deserve to win.
NASCAR announced that Logano had been fined $50,000 for his mini burning in Dillon’s pit area after racing with teammates and others on pit road.
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