Ultimately, NASCAR Cup Series managing director Brad Moran said the sanctioning body didn’t see anything that quite arose to a penalty regarding the various on-track incidents involving Shane Van Gisbergen, Austin Hill, Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar on Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway.
On Lap 48, Hill was spun hard into the wall off the nose of Van Gisbergen, and the Richard Childress Racing No. 33 team immediately felt like it was intentional and retaliatory for what transpired between them two weeks before. Van Gisbergen was leading the race on a mid-race restart that afternoon when he was spun by Hill, triggering a multi-car melee.
On the TNT Sports broadcast after the race, the broadcast team broke down the SMT data and Jamie McMurray was adamant that all the data suggested it was intentional. However, Van Gisbergen never admitted any intent over the radio, thus no punitive action from NASCAR.
That process was detailed by Moran on Wednesday morning on SiriuxXM NASCAR Radio’s The Morning Drive.
“Well, we looked at it very closely,” Moran said. “We pulled everything up on Tuesday like we always do. We actually had remote race control starting on that basically right after the incident happened. But we conducted our comprehensive review like we always do.
“We include everything from telemetry to radio communication, all vintage footage, race data, everything we have before we get in the middle of what really happened inside the race car. And there just wasn’t enough evidence there to say the incident was intentional, nor was there enough to do the same to (Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar.)
“They were both looked at and reviewed yesterday and determined there will be no penalties issued. However, we’ll be talking to both groups and making it pretty clear what we need.”
Hocevar spun off the nose of Smith, another pair of rivals, and it looked in real time as if Smith simply chose to not lift to avoid contact. NASCAR will speak to both groups of drivers on Saturday to simmer the tensions down.
Earlier in the summer, Ryan Preece was issued a $50,000 fine and a deduction of 25 points for contact with Ty Gibbs that sent the latter in the wall at Texas Motor Speedway. Optically, they look similar but Moran said Preece got a penalty for what he said over the radio, which was:
‘All right, when I get to that 54, I’m done with him. Fucking idiot,’
Preece then simply didn’t lift when Gibbs moved down slightly on the track at corner entry and suggested as much the next day on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
“For me it was more along the lines of he almost, or pretty much, was very close clear getting into (Turn) 3. And I could lift,” Preece said. “But I didn’t. I was right there and I felt like he came down and I was not going to cut him a break because in the past him and I have had problems.
“So I’ve got a little bit of a short fuse with him and I with how we’re racing. And that was just one of those situations that — could I cut him a break? Probably could have. But I didn’t.”
The penalty was upheld on appeal with the appeals panel suggesting that neither NASCAR nor Preece made their points strongly but the decision was upheld purely because Preece didn’t cut a competitor ‘a break.’
Moran agreed that the Preece and SVG incidents looked similar but the radio chatter was the ultimate distinction.
“When we did our review of that incident, we had data that we felt it was intentional,” Moran said. “We had different radio communication that led us down that direction. So we take everything together and that’s why that penalty was issued — so not saying it couldn’t have happened here.
“We try not to get in the middle. We don’t want to over-officiate. And we like aggressive driving. We like good hard racing. That’s what we do. That’s how we sell the stadiums out and that’s our plan. However, we do have to get into the middle of it occasionally and we don’t choose to do that. … So the exact same procedure was done, just came out with a different outcome and that was due to the facts that were surrounding around the incident.”
Moran said NASCAR also chose not to penalize Hill for door slamming Van Gisbergen under the ensuing caution because ‘it didn’t cross a line.’ NASCAR previously penalized Bubba Wallace after Chicago last year for a door slam, but that was during the cool down lap with Alex Bowman having started loosening his seat belts and safety equipment.
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