Sanctions OK with drivers
Wallace banned; Custer is fined
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Bubba Wallace is missing Sunday’s NASCAR race, and that’s evidently not his only sanction after losing his cool in Las Vegas last weekend.
Denny Hamlin — who, along with Michael Jordan, co-owns the 23XI racing team that Wallace drives for — said Saturday that the team has dealt with matters in a way that goes “above and beyond” the penalties handed down by NASCAR.
Hamlin didn’t say what that means, choosing to keep those matters in-house.
“He understands where I stand, where the team stands, the values that we want to present on the racetrack, and he just didn’t represent it that well last week,” Hamlin said. “But, you know, in the grand scheme of things, we’re very happy with his progress. And he knows he’s still got some stuff to work on when he gets out of the race car.”
It’s not just Wallace in the spotlight right now.
Two weeks ago, NASCAR issued $200,000 in fines after finding that Stewart-Haas Racing driver Cole Custer slowed on the backstretch of the final lap of a race in Charlotte and helped teammate Chase Briscoe move up enough to reach the next round of the playoffs. Custer and his crew chief, Mike Shiplett, were both fined $100,000 after NASCAR determined Custer’s slowdown was deliberate.
And last week, Wallace intengood tionally wrecked reigning Cup champion Kyle Larson at Las Vegas in a dangerous act of retaliation. Wallace got suspended for this week at Homestead-Miami, and playoff contender Christopher Bell got caught up in that wreck — smashing his car and denting his chances of becoming NASCAR champion. Bell remains in the playoffs, but needs to rally.
Drivers tended to agree with NASCAR on these calls.
“In my opinion, those moves were extremely, extremely dumb — both of them,” driver Daniel Suarez said of the decisions made by Custer and Wallace. “And with both of them, I was going to be extremely surprised if they were not penalties . . . You have to be smarter. I don’t know what those guys were thinking.”
That question — “What was he thinking?” — has been a story line for much of this NASCAR season, with no shortage of temper-flaring incidents.
Ross Chastain, who has had a big first season for Trackhouse Racing, has been featured prominently in a few of those. He has clashed with Hamlin, had a starring role in a wreck that put a dent in Kevin Harvick’s title chances, and his name was converted to a verb by Kyle Busch. Getting wrecked by Chastain is now, in NASCAR parlance, getting “Chastained.”
“Look, some of the things I did throughout the summer were just not . . . looking back, I would do them different,” Chastain said. “Some of it would just be my stance after the race. I would prefer it be different. But a lot of on-track stuff, I could definitely clean up.”
Wallace isn’t at Homestead this weekend, even to watch. He’ll be in the team garage.
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William Byron’s playoff push will start from the ideal spot Sunday. He won the pole in Saturday’s qualifying laps at Homestead-Miami, turning in a lap of 32.454 seconds.
That was 0.049 seconds ahead of fellow playoff entrant Bell. Another driver still in the playoff, Chase Elliott, will start third.
Among the other drivers still in the playoff: Ryan Blaney will start 13th, Hamlin 14th, Logano 17th, Briscoe 19th, and Chastain 20th.
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Noah Gragson gave JR Motorsports two drivers in the Xfinity Series championship finale with his win at Homestead.
Gragson led 127 of the 200 laps, then held off Ty Gibbs and AJ Allmendinger on a late restart, to earn his eighth win of the season and 13th of his Xfinity Series career.
Gragson joins teammate Josh Berry, who won last week at Las Vegas for the Chevrolet team owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr.