By Luis Torres, Staff Writer
Congratulations, nobody won Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway.
Austin Dillon might be declared the official race winner, but when the dust settles, it’ll go down as one of the more hollow and crass finishes of all-time.
Worsened by the fact there’s evidence that dire ordeals like the need to wreck a driver are essential to saving an otherwise miserable season. Worsened by the fact that lives were endangered once again this season when you mix a damaged car and a defeated man seeking for vengeance.
Once the penalty reports come out, there’s not going to be a happy medium. The damage is done, everyone loses.
The integrity of NASCAR is at an all-time vulnerability following Dillon’s by any means necessary tactic to ram Joey Logano out of the win and hook Denny Hamlin to secure the victory in overtime.
Dillon moved up from 32nd in the regular season standings to punch his ticket into the Cup Series playoffs for the sixth time of his career.
The sad reality is that it was inevitable that last night’s events would lead up to this because of who was involved in the overtime finish. Magnified to a thousand when you have desperate and ego-centric racers.
When it comes down to it, that’s what you get when it’s a byproduct of overtime and Playoff scenarios, especially when the top three involves the sport’s most polarizing drivers in Dillon, Joey Logano, and Denny Hamlin.
Dillon is no stranger to using his car to move out of the way to win. In fact, this is his third notable episode and the first outside of Daytona International Speedway.
Ask Aric Almirola and Austin Cindric, who were victims of losing out of a win by the man piloting the No. 3 Chevrolet. Almirola was crashed out by Dillon in the 2018 Daytona 500 while Cindric was shoved out of the lead in the regular season finale in 2022.
Not the most moral way to win, and Sunday’s outcome was another case of being desperate to win. No different from Dale Earnhardt rattling Terry Labonte’s case at Bristol 25 years ago later this month.
My biggest gripe was the typical nature of Dillon dumping Logano, another known bump and run man that affected Mark Martin (Pocono II 2012), Matt Kenseth (Kansas II 2015), and Martin Truex, Jr. (Martinsville II 2018) chances of winning over the years, went a bit too far.
Karma be damned, justified by the fans who booed Logano calling Dillon’s move as “chicken s***,” what…
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