It’s been a month now.
When NASCAR levied penalties on a total of five teams and one additional driver after the March 12 United Rentals Work United 500 at Phoenix Raceway, nobody expected controversy to linger after four more races were on the 2023 books.
But the aftershocks from Phoenix still reverberate through the sport. NASCAR’s penalty system — and the subsequent appeals process — have remained in the spotlight. And now, the entire system is at the forefront of the spot.
It began with the first inspection of the weekend at Phoenix. NASCAR confiscated the hood louvers from four Hendrick Motorsports teams. That was all anyone knew, but the louvers are one of many single-source parts, meaning they come from a single supplier and therefore cannot be altered. NASCAR didn’t say where or how they were altered, only that they were confiscated. The teams were allowed to change the louvers, which occurred before they ever took to the track.
A fifth team — this time the No. 31 of Kaulig Racing, driven by Justin Haley — had the same part taken during the next inspection, before qualifying. They had practiced with the questionable part but not competed with it, as it was changed before Haley’s qualifying run. All five cars passed inspection before and after qualifying and racing their cars.
The final action came during the closing laps of the race, after a restart bunched the field into a seething swarm of cars with tired, frustrated drivers behind the wheel. Denny Hamlin found himself sliding up the track with a choice: back out of the gas and backslide through the field or stay in it and force another driver to make the decision to back out or make contact instead. The other driver? Ross Chastain, with whom Hamlin had a history of run-ins. Hamlin didn’t back out. And neither did Chastain.
Then, during his Monday night podcast, Hamlin admitted he hadn’t tried to avoid contact with Chastain; to the contrary, he’d decided that if he was going for a slide, he’d take his rival with him.
The fallout came days later, on Wednesday, when NASCAR handed down punishments. The four Hendrick teams and Kaulig’s No. 31 team received four-week suspensions and $100,000 fines for their crew chiefs as well as the loss of 100 driver/owner points and 10 playoff points (with the lone exception of substitute driver Josh Berry on the No. 9, who is ineligible for driver points in the Cup Series and therefore could not be…
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