After Austin Dillon won at Richmond in controversial circumstances, a big question loomed over NASCAR. It was whether or not the governing body would penalize the RCR driver and potentially take away his win, something insider Jordan Bianchi recently shared his take on.
Following Dillon's win on Sunday, which booked his place in the playoffs, NASCAR's Elton Sawyer spoke about the last-lap incident and on possible action being taken against Dillon.
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Sawyer remarked that NASCAR has been "a contact sport" for a long time, and that Dillon's actions during the last lap were close to the line. He revealed that NASCAR would look at all the information and resources, so if anything rises to the level where a penalty is warranted, they will do that and announce it on Tuesday.
Speaking about Sawyer's comments on the idea of Dillon potentially being penalized, Bianchi said on the most recent episode of The Teardown podcast:
"Elton said they were going to look at it. My interpretation is that they wouldn't take away the win. That's not customarily what they would do, but I wouldn't completely rule it out. I would be surprised. Again, he was asked if the win is going to stand, and he said, 'We're going to go review everything,' and he did say, 'We're going to look at everything.' So if they're going to look at everything and they're going to piece everything together as they say, and they didn't definitively said that the win is his and he's in the playoffs, like that to me opens it up as, 'Hey, we don't know yet.'" [8:20]
Austin Dillon reacts to the idea of NASCAR potentially taking away his win at Richmond
During his post-race press conference, Austin Dillon was asked about the idea of NASCAR intervening and taking his win away because of the last-lap incidents.
Dillon spoke about the reputations of the other two drivers involved in the incidents as well as what the win means for him as a driver given the season he has had. It's worth mentioning that this was Dillon's first win since the Coke Sugar 400 win at Daytona in 2022, and this win took him from 32nd in the points standings all the way into the playoffs.
"I’ve seen Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano make moves that have been running people up the track to win. 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," Dillon said. [3:10]
He also added that over the years he has seen "a lot of stuff" in the sport where drivers are wrecked out by other drivers.
To Dillon, such moments are simply a part of NASCAR, as he pointed to Joey Logano's "that's short-track racing" comments from 2019.
