USA TODAY International Edition
Drivers need more clarity on retaliation
FONTANA, CALIF. Austin Dillon exudes a greater understanding of where the line is drawn, at least where it intersects him. Having most of NASCAR’s upper management assembled in “a power room” to collectively threaten him helped ensure that.
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver said he understands that if he were to repeat his actions of last weekend, when, under caution, he chased down and pinned the car of Cole Custer against the wall after their collision in an Xfinity Series race at Phoenix Raceway, that he would incur a suspension.
NASCAR officials, Dillon said, “weren’t happy with me,” and he knows he must be better.
But as he talked through his bout with NASCAR crime and punishment and considered series officials’ controversial decision not to sanction him, Dillon wondered where that much- debated line should be, because, he said, “There’s got to be a way to let somebody know you care.”
Drivers are asked — expected — to be personable, demonstrative, dynamic, right up to the point where the sanctioning body tells them they’ve gone too far.
That his incident came just a week after Kyle Busch flailed with a fist and apparently missed the cranium of Joey Logano after late contact in the Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway simply complicated the debate of whether a sport whose mainstream arc began with a physical assault at the end of the 1979 Daytona 500 can expect anything less. And does the use of a car make an offense punishable, while fisticuffs is just diplomacy?
“I haven’t got my UFC license yet,” Dillon quipped. “If we tied it in together, it would be pretty interesting, but I don’t know. There is a very fine line because people want to see that everybody’s held to a certain standard, I guess, but also there is a point in time where you have to make judgment calls.
“The bad thing is, do you want us to keep our racing roots or do you want us to be a professional NASCAR sport held to a different standard because this is what everybody wants to get to, is this division? And how much of your past do you keep?”
Dale Earnhardt Jr. said any action during green flag periods is “fair game,” but felt Dillon required some sort of rebuke because he ran down Custer under caution. That said, Earnhardt felt forcing Dillon to make an offmarket promotional appearance for the Xfinity Series would have sufficed because “none of the drivers like doing those.” There needed to be a gesture, he said, to acknowledge the transgression.
“What message do you send to all these guys that are racing at all the local tracks around the coun- try?” Earnhardt said. “Are you sending the message that it is OK for them to drive into each other’s door after the race is over with?”
Danica Patrick said she’d like a refund of the $ 50,000 she was fined for running down frequent antagonist David Gilliland under caution at Martinsville in 2015.
“I also got fined here last year for Kasey Kahne right- rearing me on the front straightaway at 215 miles an hour and I gave him this sign, and I got fined for that, too,” she said, referencing a $ 20,000 penalty after she walked toward the racing surface to gesture toward Kahne. “I think NASCAR makes a really big mistake of fining for some stuff, especially something that happens in the car because it makes for good TV — just like fights and all that stuff. We can handle it. I think it’s a mistake. ... I think that we handle it out on the track ourselves.” Maybe there’s another way. “I guess the best way would be to ask every Twitter fan who’s had a problem with what I did, the proper way I should retaliate,” Dillon said, “or I should pray about it and hope something happens to him.
“For me, I really don’t know what to do, truthfully. Some people love it when you do what I did. Some people hate it when you do what I did. Some people don’t know what to think.”
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