NASCAR: No penalty for Kurt Busch incident at Talladega

NASCAR is consistently inconsistent and often makes head-scratching decisions. We all know that.

But Tuesday’s announcement that officials won’t penalize Kurt Busch for driving away from safety workers after wrecking at Talladega is even more puzzling than normal.

Consider this: NASCAR suspended Busch in June for making a veiled threat to a reporter. Busch was on probation at the time, so officials felt that was a violation and gave him a week off.

Busch was still on probation Sunday at Talladega when he drove away as a safety worker leaned inside the car. The incident didn’t seem to follow NASCAR’s weekly directive to drivers: Use extra caution and care around the safety workers.

NASCAR apparently saw it differently. While it parked Busch for the rest of the race, officials decided not to issue any additional penalty on Tuesday. No suspension, no fine.

That raises the following questions:

• Does NASCAR care more about protecting the media than the safety workers who actually risk their well being on the track?

• What does “probation” even mean?

• Will NASCAR ever become consistent with its rulings?

Don’t look for the answers here, because it’s a mystery.

Declining to further penalize Busch seems like a bad precedent when it comes to safety workers; but on the other hand, there are apparently no precedents in NASCAR. Officials just do what they want, whenever they want, with seemingly no consistency from one decision to the next.

Frankly, it’s bizarre.