As Nascar’s Season Winds Down, Talk Is Not About The Championship

NASCAR set a precedent this week.

Or they didn’t, depending on your view.

Let’s get caught up:

During last Sunday’s NASCAR Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Bubba Wallace, who had led 29 laps earlier in the race, was fighting his way back to the front of the field after winning Stage 1. Racing side by side with Kevin Harvick going into Turn 3 on lap 96, Kyle Larson dove to the inside of the two looking to gain spots. Harvick, backed off and exiting Turn 4, Wallace and Larson were side by side. The two cars touched, and Wallace on the outside bounced off the wall. Larson shot down to the inside of the track, but Wallace immediately turned left hooking the rear of Larson’s car and spinning both up into the outside wall. The contact swept up Toyota driver Christopher Bell who was also forced out of the race.

As soon as Wallace’s car came to a stop, he got out and headed towards Turn 1 where Larson was climbing from his wrecked machine.

Wallace threw down his helmet and began shoving Larson, who refused to shove back. The two drivers were soon separated and done for the day. Larson’s crew chief Cliff Daniels was heard on the team radio saying the move by Wallace was clearly retaliation.

On Tuesday, NASCAR suspended Wallace for this weekend’s race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. And that suspension immediately ignited a social media firestorm with two clear sides.

On the one side were the legions of fans who were attracted to the sport because of what Wallace represents: he is currently the sports lone Black driver in its top tier Cup series, and the first to score two victories, the second coming at Kansas Speedway earlier in the season.

On the other side are those fans who aren’t as embracing when it comes to changes in the sport, with a smaller subset of those being outright racist and firmly against all things Bubba Wallace.

Wallace has been a somewhat polarizing figure since he entered the sport. This despite him just wanting to be another driver racing in NASCAR who wanted to do his talking on the track.

Fate intervened, however and Wallace was thrust into the spotlight during NASCAR’s pandemic ravaged season in 2020. While all sports sat on the sideline, protests erupted across America after George Floyd, a Black man, died in police custody. America began to have a reckoning with its racist past.

And NASCAR decided to accelerate its ongoing diversity efforts as well.

Shortly after the sport returned to racing at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Wallace wore a “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirt, a reference to the words Floyd spoke before he died. He followed that up in the weeks after the race by going on National TV saying it was time that NASCAR banned the Confederate flag, something that the sport had flirted with for years.

This time though, NASCAR listened and did just that.

Not long after that, Wallace was again unwillingly thrust into the center of attention. At Talladega there were reports that a noose had been found in the garage stall occupied by Wallace’s team; NASCAR reacted, informing Wallace, calling in the FBI and making the incident very public.

It turned out to be nothing, and in fact Wallace himself never saw the garage door pull that might have resembled a noose, and that had been there since at least the previous year. But before all that was known NASCAR, its drivers, and Wallace showed just how far diversity and inclusion in the sport had come in a very short time. Wallace and the field, along with this then boss Richard Petty who had flown in that morning, pushed Wallace’s car to the front of the grid then gathered during the pre-race invocation and singing of the National Anthem. It was an emotional moment widely seen across mainstream media throughout the world.

Since then, Wallace has become an activist for sport attracting new fans, and sponsors along the way. Those new supporters, Black and white, root for Bubba Wallace. NFL stars like Alvin Kamara were attracted to the sport with Kamara partnering with JD Motorsports; NBA legend Michael Jordan announced his co-ownership of 23XI Racing and Cuban American entertainer Pitbull became co-owner of another new team, Trackhouse Racing.

It’s on this stage that Wallace’s most recent penalty must be viewed.

Wallace’s fans felt that maybe the penalty was too harsh; maybe a stern talking, but no more.

For the other side, nothing short of sending Wallace into a Napoleonic exile on the island of Elba for the rest of his natural life would do.

One former NASCAR driver even said Wallace should have been banned for the rest of the season. Meanwhile many of the same group of fans who refused to embrace the diversity coming in the sport, led by that small subset, flooded comment sections with negative, expletive filled, rants many of which alluded to his race.

Wallace was the first driver penalized with a race suspension since Matt Kenseth was sat for 2 races in 2015. Kenseth, who was not in the Playoffs at the time, very publicly took out Joey Logano, who was very much in the Playoffs, during a race at Martinsville. Logano was leading the race at the time, and Kenseth was several laps down. Kenseth later said the move was in retaliation for a move by Logano several weeks earlier at Kansas that ended up with Kenseth crashed and out of the Playoffs.

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Kenseth made no excuses and life moved on, though Logano didn’t win the title that season nor even make it to the Final 4.

The suspension for Kenseth was indeed harsh but carried with it no fines or points penalty. In that same race, Danica Patrick tried to take out David Gilliland in retaliation for earlier contact. She failed miserably and actually suffered more damage to her car, than Gilliland. For that retaliation however, Patrick was fined $50,000 and docked 25 driver points.

In 2012 Jeff Gordon intentionally wrecked Clint Bowyer at Phoenix. Gordon was fined $100,000 but avoided suspension, even though the retaliation ended Bowyer’s title hopes.

Prior to the Kenseth suspension and Gordon-Bowyer fracas, in 2011 Kyle Busch was “parked”, in essence suspended, after he wrecked Ron Hornaday Jr. during a Truck race in Texas. Busch was forced to sit out the Xfinity and Cup series race that weekend. The following week he was fined $50,000 and put on probation for the rest of the season but allowed to resume racing.

The point is, at least to some of the ‘haters’, is the seeming inconsistency in the penalties NASCAR has handed out over the years. Fines, points, suspensions, probation, or just suspension. Or maybe just a fine, or points.

Perhaps the haters have a valid point. By simply suspending Wallace for one race, but not fining him, or taking away points it almost seems like a slap on the wrist. After all, Busch was docked points in 2011 and fined; though in 2015 Kenseth wasn’t, only suspended two races.

Or perhaps the Wallace fans have a valid point.

It really seems then that there aren’t precedents, only inconsistency when it comes to on-track retaliation.

It turns though out sometimes precedents aren’t really needed in NASCAR.

After Wallace’s suspension was announced, Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s chief operating officer, called into SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s “SiriusXM Speedway” and talked about why the sanctioning body responded to Wallace’s actions with a suspension.

“Our actions are really specific to what took place on the racetrack,” O’Donnell said. “And when we look at how that incident occurred, in our minds, really a dangerous act. We thought that was intentional and put other competitors at risk. And as we look at the sport and where we are today and where we want to draw that line going forward, we thought that definitely crossed the line and that’s what we focused on in terms of making this call.”

O’Donnell said NASCAR officials looked at data and reviewed multiple angles of the incident before deciding to suspend Wallace.

“When we look at drivers historically, it’s been very rare if ever that we suspend drivers, so we don’t take that action lightly,” he said. “So we view our penalties from what has to happen at the racetrack. It’s a driver-driven sport. Obviously, everybody’s very important to what takes place in the sport.”

O’Donnell pointed out that it’s all about crossing a line.

“But the driver oftentimes is the focus,” he said. “And what happens on track is a big focus. So in this case, that’s an action we’ve rarely moved forward with when it comes to a driver.

“There’s comparisons to what we’ve done in the past, but as we’ve always said, we need to ratchet things up where we see that there’s a line that’s been crossed.”

Wallace isn’t in the Playoffs, nor was Larson, so maybe taking away points wouldn’t make much difference. But the argument could be made that despite not being in the Playoffs, finishing higher in the driver points would mean more money at the end of the season. Then again, missing an entire race, and the points that come along with that, could be tantamount to docking points.

NASCAR’s suspension wasn’t the only punishment delivered to Wallace. Bell is in the Playoffs, and being a Toyota driver, Wallace issued an apology to Bell, and the rest of the Toyota contingent, in a conference call.

Then there is Denny Hamlin, who is a driver, but also co-owner with Jordan of the 23XI Racing team that Wallace drives for. Saturday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Hamlin said the team also came down on Wallace in a way that goes “above and beyond” the penalties handed down by NASCAR.

“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 told the AP. “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.”

At the end of the day no matter what NASCAR does there will be those who think they went too far, and those not far enough. That hasn’t changed since NASCAR began in 1947. And with just two races go in the season, it’s the Wallace controversy that’s putting NASCAR in the mainstream media. As has often been said any PR is good PR, and while the executives would certainly rather have the talk be about the final races and the lead up to the Championship race in Phoenix, NASCAR is getting more attention and its passionate fans are watching, tweeting, and talking about the sport more.

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And none of it takes away from what Wallace, and NASCAR, have done to attract new fans to the sport and make it more inclusive. Haters going to hate, and racists will still spew no matter what, but NASCAR will continue to mete out punishment based on the individual circumstances, not on any sort of precedent or fan desires.

In May at Darlington, Joey Logano bumped leader William Byron out of the way to win the race. There were no sanctions by NASCAR, because that was for a race win. The Wallace-Larson incident wasn’t, and Wallace used his car as a weapon.

“NASCAR’s like your parents a lot of times,” Logano said Saturday. “There’s a line of, you know, you’ve got to let the boys figure it out sometimes, and they’ll figure it out together and move on — or mom and dad has to step in a little bit and control the situation because it’s gotten out of hand. So, I believe NASCAR kind of decided it’s getting out of hand.”