Chase Elliott went into the Cup Series race at Indianapolis with a three-point lead over teammate Kyle Larson in the points table. Both the drivers have been fighting it out for the regular season championship honors over the past several weeks. Elliott, however, had his chances take a big hit when he was served a pass-through penalty for a blend-line violation following his first pit stop.
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The promotion had just released the rule on Saturday which gave little time for drivers to understand it. And Elliott, as it appears, didn’t. He protested on his radio that he had only done as told in the rule book but the penalty stood. Larson was asked about this in his post-race interview and the No. 5 detailed how it all played out from his point-of-view.
“The way I understood the rule was that you couldn’t get your right sides over the far white line because then you would be deemed on the racing surface. That’s what I did,” he said. Larson had been following Elliott as they exited the pit road at this point. He continued to note, “Yeah, I was following Chase. He swung way out. Yeah, I was like, ‘Man, that’s got to be a penalty.”
“If it’s not, at least I know how much further I can swing out. I think it took them a couple of laps to find a replay of it. Ultimately he got a penalty and I didn’t. I knew what I did was legal.” Had Elliott waited a bit longer after the exit of Turn 2 to get onto the race track, as Larson did, he would’ve not been penalized. The punishment dropped him to 17th place in the running order.
‘I did exactly what the fucking sheet said to do’
Elliott contended to crew chief Alan Gustafson on his radio that he had followed what was said in the rule book. He quipped, as relayed by tobychristie.com, “I mean what the f**k? [inaudible] Do exactly what they fucking tell us to do. They didn’t say line, they said racing surface, so you tell me how the f**k I was on the racing surface.”
NASCAR decided to share the notation that it had sent to drivers pre-race to clear the air on the situation. Elliott’s frustration possibly stemmed from getting a penalty for the second week in a row. He finished his race in tenth place and now sits 10 points behind Larson on the points table.
Four more races remain to decide who the regular season champion will be. But before then, NASCAR is in for a short break of two weeks. It will return to racing at Richmond in August.
