It Would Be Shameful If NASCAR Turns the Other Cheek on Austin Dillon

If history teaches anything it’s that NASCAR will let Austin Dillon get away with his controversial victory in Sunday night’s Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway. If so, it will be a shameful cop-out by the sanctioning body, although not surprising.

Since the very beginning and throughout much of its history the organization has been loath to take down a winning number atop the scoring pylon. Founder and early czar “Big Bill” France felt that ticket-buying fans had a right to leave his tracks knowing that what they’d just seen was, indeed, the way it had been.

Understandably, that wasn’t always the case. As recently documented, eight drivers who apparently won on-track lost in post-race inspection. That happened far more often in the 1950s and 1960s than recently, since pre- and post-race inspections have grown more thorough. It’s been several years since a flagged winner was taken down in post-race tech.

And it’s been almost 33 years since a driver lost an apparent victory because of an on-track incident. In 1991, at Sonoma, second-running Ricky Rudd nudged aside leader Davey Allison coming for the white flag. With time to review footage of the contact, officials told the flagman to withhold the checkered when Rudd came around and, instead, show it to Allison.

NASCAR seems to have an unwritten rule — “Big Bill’s, maybe? — that excuses blatant on-track conduct. The late Dale Earnhardt, for example, went to victory lane at Bristol in 1999 after clearly wrecking leader Terry Labonte on the last lap. Kyle Busch pushed leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. aside to win at Richmond in 2008. One long-time NASCAR journalist has said that if NASCAR vacates Dillon’s victory, it should vacate about half of Earnhardt’s.

Looking back, Rudd vs. Allison, Earnhardt vs. Labonte, and Earnhardt Jr. vs Busch was minor child’s-play compared to what Dillon did at Richmond. Except for Rudd, none of them was punished to any great extent for “rough driving.”

Clearly in control toward the end, everything went sideways for Dillon when a late caution bunched the field. Instead of cruising to his first victory since the summer of 2022 in Daytona Beach, the grandson of team owner Richard Childress was forced into an overtime restart and two-lap shootout.

Second-starting Joey Logano got a better restart from the outside line—Dillon suggested Logano may have jumped the start—and led into Turn 1 on the white-flag lap. Dillon dutifully followed back around and was still second when they reached Turn 3 on the ¾-mile track.

Running four- or so car-lengths behind approaching the checkered, Dillon simply plowed into Logano, sending the two-time champion up the track, around, and into the outside wall. Some may consider that contact perfectably acceptable since the “bump-and-run” move is as old as racing itself. But the “crash-and-run” is a wholly altogether thing.

That contact briefly slowed Dillon and let third-running Denny Hamlin slip by on the bottom. As Hamlin went by, though, Dillon simply turned left and hooked Hamlin’s right-rear. That sent the local favorite him into the outside wall within sight of the checkered flag that Dillon took seconds later.

In post-race, Dillon fielded a brace of questions regarding that last-turn, last-lap contact. Understandably, he found it totally acceptable.

“I’ve seen Denny and Joey make moves that have been running people up the track to win,” he said after the victory that likely (maybe?) made him Playoff-eligible. “This is the first opportunity in two years for me to be able to get a win. I drove in there and kept all four tires turning across the start-finish line. I've seen a lot of stuff over the years where people move people. It's just part of our sport… know what I mean?”

If the fact that Dillon drives the sainted No. 3 Chevrolet for RCR was lost on him, it wasn’t lost on fans who once brought down the thunder when “Big Dale” won in a slam-bam finish like Dillon did at Richmond.

“It never crossed my mind to tell you the truth,” he said of the 3-car irony. “It happened that way. Yeah, I saw a lot of races with Dale moving guys and pissing people off. A lot of people booed him throughout his career (but far more cheered him). I think Kyle Busch is the closest thing we've had to a Dale Earnhardt Sr.

“I'm not that. I'm Austin Dillon and I'm just going to try hard. When I get an opportunity, I'm going to give it everything I got. That's literally what it was that last lap. I didn't have anything else in my mind. Didn't matter what anybody said to me. I thought I did a good job of getting it in (Turn 3) about as deep as I had all night and not spinning out myself.”

Some long-time fans might remember when Cup Series director Robin Pemberton uttered some of the most famous words in NASCAR. He was asked during a 2010 pre-season media session how drivers should settle on-track conflicts. Without batting an eye, he simply said, “Boys … have at it.”