Let’s Add Jeff Gordon To The Round Of 12

There was some either shady or highly coincidental stuff going on at Bristol Motor Speedway last weekend.

With the battle for the final spots in the NASCAR Cup Series’ Round of 12 coming down to only a few points, every position mattered. It ended with Austin Cindric claiming the 12th spot by a mere two points over both Tyler Reddick and Kyle Busch. But had that gap been only one point instead two, then it might’ve led to Spingate 2. Complete with 100% less spinning.

Remember Spingate? For newer fans, the 2013 Cup cutoff race featured an alleged intentional spin by Clint Bowyer and an unnecessary pit stop by Brian Vickers to help get their Michael Waltrip Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr. into the playoffs over Ryan Newman. Also, David Gilliland allegedly slowed down to give Ford teammate Joey Logano a position that allowed him to make it in the playoffs over Jeff Gordon.

The most incriminating part of Spingate was that when MWR general manager Ty Norris, who now holds the same role at Trackhouse Racing Team was ordering Vickers to pit leading the driver to question why. Norris let it slip that they needed one point. As a result, NASCAR came down on MWR the hardest, fining it $300,000 and 50 points per car while indefinitely suspending Norris.

The points penalty dropped Truex out of the playoffs with Newman getting the spot again. And since there wasn’t enough concrete evidence against Team Penske for the deal with Gilliland, Logano kept his playoff spot, but another playoff spot was added for Gordon to slide into.

To clarify, despite the headline of this column, I do not actually believe Gordon should be added to this year’s Round of 12. However, there might’ve been some similarities to Spingate and what played out at Bristol.

Busch’s engine blew on lap 269, and the rest of the race was spent seeing if Cindric and Reddick could finish high enough to overtake the No. 18 as well as each other. In the meantime, Ty Gibbs, who had pulled his No. 23 Toyota into the garage earlier in the race after having power steering issues, returned to the track. Gibbs was four laps away from passing Busch when he pulled back into the garage and parked it for the night.

23XI Racing President Steve Lauletta hinted at Gibbs parking it to benefit Toyota teammate Busch in a tweet. Losing that position would’ve made it that much harder for Busch to make it into the Round of 12.

Joe Gibbs does not run @23XIRacing we do and while in an Owners Championship…