Is it time for NASCAR to start penalizing drivers for avoidable contact on road courses?

Last Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race was a tale of two halves. The sport's return to the Circuit of the Americas in the 2023 season witnessed two very different outcomes depending on where you were in the pack on the 3.4-mile-long track.

As per stock car racing debutant Jenson Button, the 231-mile-long race was a:

"Roller coaster, a whole F1 season in one race."

While fans were treated to spectacular racing in the top 5 to 10 positions on the grid throughout the race, everyone's attention turned to how the 68-lap-long race came to an end.

With 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick managing to make the trip to Victory Lane after a triple overtime restart, the final portion of the race took almost an hour to conclude.

Each and every restart would see subsequent caution flag periods as drivers jammed their cars up the hill into turn 1 at the Austin, Texas track. As has been a topic of discussion in NASCAR for several weeks now, respect between drivers and over-aggressive moves on the track have once again taken center stage.

Cup Series part-timers who were gracing the field at COTA last weekend also expressed their sentiments as they came to sample NASCAR after their primary careers in several different genres of motorsports.

Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen and Jordan Taylor were all left flabbergasted by the 'bumper-cars' style of racing in NASCAR.

While some might argue that NASCAR as a sport is built upon aggressive driving as a phenomenon, certain Cup Series regulars like Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin have been vocal about the change in the way drivers race today.

Busch was critical of the moves he saw on the track recently and elaborated during the Atlanta weekend:

“We completely lost any sense of respect in the garage area between drivers, at all. There was an etiquette that once did live here. The solution, I think, starts with repercussions. There isn't any, so why listen?"

Denny Hamlin speaks his mind on restart chaos at NASCAR COTA race

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was another veteran of the sport who took to his popular podcast Actions Detrimental to voice his displeasure over how the field raced at COTA last weekend.

The Tampa native said:

"We all have a responsibility to have respect for each other but we don't. When it's someone making contact one vs. one, the person has the embarrassment of seeing it on TV and everyone watching. When we all get stacked up here, they don't get credit for the wreck."

It remains to be seen if drivers' calls for changes to the ruling will be entertained by the governing body. Meanwhile, NASCAR goes live from the Richmond Raceway in Virginia this weekend for the Toyota Owners 400.