Video is still being reviewed and no concrete decision has been made, but all signs point to NASCAR not penalizing Joey Logano and Kyle Busch for their involvement in a fight following Sunday’s Monster Energy Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
NASCAR shouldn’t penalize Kyle Busch, Joey Logano for post-race fight
Kyle Busch and Joey Logano won’t likely be sanctioned by NASCAR for their involvement in a post-race fight on Sunday, and that’s the right decision.
It’s the smart decision. And it’s the correct decision.
As NASCAR grew into a national brand with mainstream appeal the common knock was that it lost touch with its rough-and-tumble ways whose roots are linked to bootlegging. “NASCAR is too corporate,” and “the drivers are too vanilla and worried about their sponsors to show any personality” were and remain common expressions disenfranchised fans say about why they’ve fallen out of favor with the sport.
To its credit, the NASCAR powers that be have admitted they veered too far off the path that helped propel NASCAR to billion-dollar television contracts, and in recent years enacted many measures to return some edge to a sport that many felt had become stale.
This is why in 2014 Jeff Gordon and Brad Keselowski weren’t punished for their roles in a brawl following a playoff race at Texas Motor Speedway, or why Matt Kenseth wasn’t sanctioned for jumping Keselowski between two haulers at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Raw emotion is a good thing, and though sometimes it will manifest itself in ways that are unseemly — and thusly deserving of punishment — drivers engaging in post-race theatrics is a good thing.
“We’re going to have moments,” NASCAR CEO and chairman Brian France said Monday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “We just shouldn’t come out of our chairs over this. It is what it is. The drivers are doing everything they can.
“The pressure on these guys today is so difficult. So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that every once in a while somebody is going to boil over, somebody is going to think that they saw an incident in a different way and, whether it’s true or not true doesn’t matter, emotions are going to get the best of them. That’s just part of it.”
(Video credit: Reporter Jeff Gluck of JeffGluck.com)
Were NASCAR to penalize Busch or Logano for their actions on Las Vegas’ pit road, a clear message would be conveyed that it was returning to the draconian days such as when Gordon was fined $10,000 for merely shoving Kenseth after a 2006 race at Bristol Motor Speedway. And such heavy-handedness is something that is not good for anyone involved. Drivers would feel inclined to stifle themselves, fans would become put-off by the lack of fieriness, and NASCAR would lose out because it would have fewer of those “moments” executives like to utilize through various promotional initiatives.
No one wants to see NASCAR become like professional hockey in the 1970s where line brawls were commonplace and the actual sporting competition became a sideshow to boxing on ice. Nor are acts like Kenseth deliberately wrecking Logano such as he did two years even remotely acceptable.
There is, however, a fine line between the frontier justice drivers fondly speak of and all-out hooliganism. And what Busch did on Sunday certainly deserves classification in the former.
“We also want to be realistic, there is just a lot of emotion and a lot of pressure on these guys to do well and compete at a high level,” France said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “When something goes terribly wrong, as it did for Kyle, you know, emotions are going to get the best of all of us at some point or another.
“Obviously, that’s what happened on Sunday.”
Angered by what he thought was Logano’s over-aggressiveness that saw Logano slide up into him and cause him to spin on the final lap, Busch essentially walked into a lion’s den filled with Logano’s crew members to seek retribution. Busch sent his message with a right cross that may or may not have connected, while Logano adamantly said he did nothing wrong.
If any penalties result from the fracas, the offenders are Logano’s crew members, who may have went beyond acceptable measures in separating Busch and took liberties of their own based off the cut on Busch’s forehead. An understandable no-no NASCAR has every reason to crackdown on, lest an incident blows up and transforms into a full-fledged brawl.
But drivers shoving and occasionally fighting on pit road? Sorry, that’s not worthy of a penalty. If anything, NASCAR execs should’ve been mindful of their Las Vegas surroundings and reacted by bringing an octagon onto pit road.
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