Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was fined $75,000 by NASCAR for coming to blows with Kyle Busch following the race last week. Given that NASCAR has heavily promoted the incident, Stenhouse’s reprimand has irritated his fellow drivers, particularly Denny Hamlin.
According to Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports, Hamlin stated that NASCAR privately enjoys the types of confrontations we witnessed from Stenhouse and Busch last week, but must fine them regardless.
He feels they are “okay with general altercations” but does not want things to escalate. “There’s certainly been things that they quietly like to root for, but publicly, they have to do something different because they don’t want it to get out of hand,” Hamlin said. “With that dollar fine, you are going to have people think, ‘I don’t want that [fine]’ so you might not get what you probably are hoping for.’
“It might hurt a little bit in that instance. I think they’re okay with general altercations, but I think typically just the amount of time that elapsed from the [on-track] incident to when it happened.”
Hamlin is probably right. Incidents like what we saw last week were great for engagement and probably didn’t hurt NASCAR’s image contrary to what they would likely admit.
Even so, NASCAR can’t publicly condone, let alone encourage, that kind of behavior from Stenhouse.
What do you think the best solution is?
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