Actions harmful are all the rage in NASCAR right now, and not Denny Hamlin’s podcast with the same name. This is about the subset of sections in the NASCAR rule book that oversees behavior penalties for issues such as intentional crashing and fighting, which have continued to come up this summer, prompting both the industry and fans to consider the application of consistency throughout each incident.
For example, at Nashville Superspeedway, Layne Riggs was parked two laps after taking a retaliatory hit to the back bumper under caution against Stefan Parsons. Two days later, Carson Hocevar received no real-time punishment for intentionally right rear hooking Harrison Burton under caution, but he did earn a $50,000 fine later in the week.
That’s the same fine Bubba Wallace received after the race weekend in Downtown Chicago for a hard door slam that squeezed Alex Bowman into the wall after the checkered flag. At the same time this was happening, Chase Elliott took a considerably lighter swipe at Daniel Suarez and received nothing more than a talking to by league officials.
A talking to is exactly what Corey Lajoie is going to receive before the race weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for his part in contributing to an incident in which Kyle Busch spun off his bumper and collected several other drivers before hitting the wall.
Some have drawn parallels to the right rear hooks into the wall that led to a suspension last year for Chase Elliott (against Denny Hamlin in the Coca-Cola 600) and Bubba Wallace in 2022 (against Kyle Larson) at Las Vegas.
But then, if what Wallace did to Bowman was so egregious, why wasn’t Ty Gibbs fined more than $15,000 for taking a door swipe at Sam Mayer at pit road in 2022 at Martinsville in the Xfinity Series. Even if you escalate that to Cup Series rates, maybe that’s $30,000 at most for something that was potentially more harmful to more people than what Wallace did.
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