The Richmond race was truly thrilling. The race in which Austin Dillon took the checkered flag, ended in a controversy. The #3 of Richard Childress Racing, literally swept his way through Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin. Post the race the radio conversation of Logano’s spotter went viral on the internet. Where he was telling Dillon to wreck Logano.
Also in a tweet, NASCAR journalist Jeff Gluck talked about the same, it read, Dillon’s team on the radio said, “I don’t care how you do it” before he hit Joey Logano and then “Wreck him! Wreck him!” before Denny Hamlin.” RCR got a lot of backlash because of this followed by which owner Richard Childress clarified that no such thing was said. While everyone is hitting at RCR for this, NASCAR Insider, Brett Griffin, came to their rescue. According to him, this is not the first time a team has asked his driver to wreck another driver.
NASCAR insider to the rescue of RCR
Celebrations are on in the RCR camp as Dillon has broken their dry spell in the 2024 Cup series season. However many think the way that victory was achieved wasn’t in the most ethical way. What happened was, that Austin Dillon was poised for victory in the closing laps of the Cook Out 400 until a late caution flag threw a wrench into his plans. Joey Logano capitalized on the restart, taking the lead. Undeterred, Dillon made a daring, aggressive move, spinning Logano and collecting Denny Hamlin in the process. This chaotic incident sent Hamlin into the wall. While Hamlin finished in P2, Logano had to be satisfied with P19.
Expectedly Logano was furious at Dillon and called his move chicken sh*t. He also displayed his aggression at the pit lane in front of the RCR faction. Post the race the radio conversation came to light making many furious. However, NASCAR insider Brett Griffin talked about how telling your racer to wreck the one in front of him is not an uncommon conversation. On the Door Bumper Clear podcast episode; he said, “This is not the first time a spotter has ever said Wreck somebody this is not the first time that anybody has ever encouraged anybody to wreck somebody.”
According to him probably this is just part of the game, or was just said in the heat of the moment. But shouldn’t the team and racer control their nerves in moments like such? He goes on to say that the radio conversation isn’t as big of a deal as it will be made out to be. Defending the RCR spotter he said, “This is going to probably get blown way out of f**king proportion and in reality how many times when you guys are on the roof when another spotter comes down there and starts fussing at you for what your driver and your scenario is doing, do y’all say I’m not driving the car. The spotter can say whatever the hell he wants in any scenario but he still not driving the car.” For the RCR wrecking drivers is probably a normal thing as many of Dillon’s past victories have come in the same fashion
The #3 of RCR was unapologetic for the way he conducted things on that last lap. Post the race he said, “I felt like with two [laps] to go, we were the fastest car obviously at the straightway and wrecked the guy. I hate to do that but sometimes you just got to have it.” Also, Richard Childress was unapologetic too as on the radio controversy, he later said, “Well, if he did [say it], spotter did a good job, because it won him the race.”
Is this really the precedence NASCAR wants to leave? NASCAR’s Elton Sawyer currently has been very neutral on the incident as according to him the incident did not cross the ‘unacceptable’ line. He said, “Our sport has been a contact sport for a long time. You always hear, ‘Where’s the line, did someone cross the line?’ I would say the last lap was awful close to the line, we’ll take a look at all of the available resources from audio to video, listen to spotters, we’ll listen to crew chiefs and drivers and if anything rises to a level that we feel like we need to penalize then we’ll do that on Tuesday.”
The question is if penalized would it be just a monetary fine? Or would he lose his playoff chance?
