NASCAR elected not to punish Austin Dillon for his actions against Cole Custer in last weekend’s XFINITY Series race at Phoenix International Raceway in which Dillon ran his car into Custer’s under caution as retaliation for contact just minutes prior.
The no penalty decision raised eyebrows as just the day prior, NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer Steve O’Donnell said that NASCAR wouldn’t allow drivers to use cars as a weapon.
It came after a meeting with Kyle Busch and Joey Logano, who were involved in a post-race brawl on pit road the preceding week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway where the former punched the latter in the face, and NASCAR chose not to fine either for their involvement.
The driver most vocal about NASCAR’s ruling was Danica Patrick, saying NASCAR should “Give me my money back.”
Last year, she was hooked into the outside wall by Kasey Kahne and fined for walking onto the apron to show her displeasure to him.
“I also got fined here last year for Kasey Kahne right-rearing me on the front straightaway at 215 miles an hour and I gave him this sign, and I got fined for that, too,” she said.
Patrick was upset about NASCAR’s ambiguous rules, but she was more concerned about fining drivers for actions that “makes for good TV.”
“I think NASCAR makes a really big mistake of fining for some stuff, especially something that happens in the car because it makes for good TV – just like fights and all that stuff,” she said. “We can handle it. I think it’s a mistake. I might be speaking too much, but I’ve been fined a few times and I think that it makes for good TV and I think that we handle it out on the track ourselves.”
Patrick said she’s fine with NASCAR having not fined drivers in the last few weeks, she wishes that they were consistent in that regard and asked where the fine money goes to.
“Yeah, I’d rather that be the standard,” she added. “I mean, what does that really do? I’m not gonna not go on vacation. I would actually rather know what it did. I would actually love to see like the playground that got built for it, or homeless people that got food. I would like to see actually what the money does for fines because it’s supposed to go to charity, right? So what does it really do? I would like to see that.”
