Austin Dillon took out both Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano on the final lap as he picked up his fifth career Cup Series win at Richmond Raceway last Sunday. The Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske drivers were left fuming after the finish and understandably so. While Logano believes that the whole incident was Dillon’s fault, Hamlin pinned the blame on NASCAR and the playoffs format as he spoke to the media after the race. All in all, it was a chaotic return for the sport from the Olympics break.
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The 43-year-old believes that such aggressive driving sets a wrong precedent for future generations. NASCAR awarded Dillon the win despite what happened on the final lap which gives the impression that one could wreck their way to a victory. For the driver of the #3 Chevrolet, this was a desperate situation as he was way down in the points and would have never made the playoffs without a win. Hamlin does not entirely fault him for what he did but he was not okay with how things had turned out.
INSANITY ON THE FINAL LAP AT RICHMOND.
AUSTIN DILLON WINS AFTER CRASHING JOEY LOGANO AND DENNY HAMLIN. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/mpQKcK236J
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) August 12, 2024
“I don’t fault him because he is completely desperate,” he told the media. “There’s no guardrails or rules that say don’t do that and there’s no one in the tower that has any problem with it. We’re never ever going to get taken seriously as a sport because we have no real officiating.”
With the win, Dillon has made it into the playoffs after a two-year absence, From Richard Childress Racing’s perspective, this was a silver lining in what has been a dark cloud of a season. The way it happened might be questionable but a win is a win at the end of the day and they will have a car in the final 16.
“We’re trying to manufacture these type of moments”
The driver of the #11 Toyota has never been one to mince his words as he launched a scathing criticism of NASCAR. The playoff format has been long debated ever since its inception in 2014. After Sunday’s events, those debates only got louder. Hamlin slammed the format in the post-race interview, stating that it was being used to manufacture such incidents.
“We’ve set up eliminations and playoffs and knockouts and one race for a championship. We’re trying to manufacture these type of moments and when we do it and we look silly…in my mind your sport has mud on its face but I think that there are probably people in Daytona that love this s**t,” he said.
An incident as big as this will certainly spring NASCAR into action. They might not take away the race win from the #3 team but the rules about wrecking other drivers could get a lot stricter. Whether those will be properly implemented or not will be the thing to look out for.
