NASCAR unlikely to penalize Kyle Busch, Joey Logano for postrace fight

Neither Kyle Busch nor Joey Logano is likely to face discipline over their roles in a fight following Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell said Monday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

Busch confronted and punched Logano on pit road just moments after the Kobalt 400 had finished. He was then wrestled to the ground by several of Logano’s crew members. The skirmish was quickly broken up by NASCAR officials, and as Busch was being escorted away, he was shown to have a cut on his forehead.

“We’ve always said that we’ve got to take everything and make sure we look at all the video,” O’Donnell told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “I would say from our initial assessment last night in looking at what happened, as far as on track, I don’t think we saw anything that was intentional by any means. We’ll continue to review that. We’ve got to have discussions with both drivers. We talked to some folks postrace as well.

“I think our intention would be not to react unless we see something that we haven’t seen yet and something that comes up from those discussions. We’ll certainly bring both drivers together before we go on track in Phoenix and again have some dialogue. Still under review. It’s an emotional sport, and I think it shows exactly how much every position means on the track. These weren’t two guys going for the win, obviously going for top 10s, but it shows how important it is in the sport.”

NASCAR’s stance on drivers fighting has softened in recent years.

When Jeff Gordon and Brad Keselowski and their respective teams were involved in a postrace melee after a 2014 playoff race at Texas Motor Speedway, neither driver was penalized though several of Gordon’s crew members were fined and suspended for their involvement. Truck Series driver Cole Custer also escaped penalty after he tackled another driver following a race last season.

NASCAR’s preference is that if two drivers have issue with one another, their teams allow them to resolve it how they best see fit and crew members do not interject or escalate the proceedings. But if an altercation does become physical between drivers, it is acceptable for crew members to intercede and break up the fracas.

“What our position has been, we want to leave it in the drivers’ hands,” O’Donnell said. “What we don’t want to see, and the drivers have asked for this, which is very fair, is a crew member initially approaching a driver or initiating some type of altercation with a driver.

“Just early review of this (incident). This was two drivers with crew members kind of stepping back, and once something happens, a crew is taught, which I think is right, that if someone comes up in your pit box and attacks your guy, you have the right to try to break that up or bring it to a stop. That was the initial review that we saw from the crew members. Again, there is still other video out there that we’ve got to look at. When we talked postrace to the race team, that kind of confirmed what we had seen.”

If after its review is concluded and NASCAR determines those involved deserve punishment, any penalties would be announced on either Tuesday or Wednesday.