NASCAR driver code remains in garage, but where is the line on track? – USA TODAY
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USA TODAY Sports’ Brant James breaks down the AAA Texas 500.
USA TODAY Sports
FORT WORTH – The demarcation line of acceptable behavior has been redefined and Joey Logano thinks he can see it.
Carl Edwards isn’t so sure.
Jeff Gordon is just glad NASCAR tried to thicken it a bit. But where he straddles it might depend on whether Brad Keselowski is in the calculus.
The two-race suspension Matt Kenseth incurred this week for intentionally crashing Logano off the lead at Martinsville Speedway hasn’t changed the unwritten code governing high-speed action and reaction in NASCAR racing. Drivers will race competitors, they still say, as they have been raced previously. They will react or over-react to the limits of their self-control. And then NASCAR will have more decisions to make.
Perhaps, Kenseth’s wrecking of Logano might prove too extreme of an example to help better define what is acceptable. And so, in many ways, it is business as usual entering the third-to-last Sprint Cup race of the season Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway. But drivers will have to consider the ramifications of retaliation, Logano said, when their buttons get pushed.
“I think it will for certain (change their actions) and what you would do in those situations,” he said. “I can’t speak for everyone in our sport, you know what I mean? I just worry about what I am as a race car driver, what our team is as a race team and I worry about that and how I would handle situations and knowing the consequences of it. Does it change the way I would handle a situation? Probably not. Does it change the way other people would handle a situation? I can’t answer that. I don’t know. I think we all did learn what NASCAR’s stance is on this and that is something we will all put in our memory bank and know that going into the future.”
Penalty ‘a shock’
Edwards said the severity of the penalty assessed his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate was “a shock” and predicted that drivers “will be on pretty decent behavior because of that.”
But does it impact how he approaches a potentially nettlesome predicament in a race? That’s not a perspective he can humor while currently in fifth in the driver standings, seven points below the transfer line of drivers who will advance to the final at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“Not really, no. I don’t know what it all means,” he said. “My plan is just to go forward and race like I have all year to try to win one of these next two events and be locked into Homestead and go win the championship. There’s so many factors in this situation with so many different things happening, it’s really difficult to line it all up and say, ‘Okay, this is why this happened and this is how to proceed going forward.’ It seems pretty complex. I’m just going to focus on my deal and we’ll move on.”
The Kenseth-Logano row began late in the Chase race at Kansas Speedway, when Logano responded to a third block by the race leader by moving him out of the way. Kenseth’s only realistic path to the third round was with a win; Logano already had secured his spot in the third round with a win at Charlotte. Eliminated and lapped at Martinsville two weeks later, Kenseth wrecked Logano to a costly 37th-place finish, which put the most successful driver in this Chase in need of a win at Texas or Phoenix International Raceway next week to further his title hopes.
Logano said he would change no aspect of his decision-making during or since Kansas.
“I am confident in the decisions that we have made. I am confident in the decisions I made as a driver and the decisions we made as a team,” he said. “That was a racing thing what happened at Kansas.”
Gordon said he likely wouldn’t have approached the situation like Logano because he doesn’t consider himself as aggressive. There would be exceptions, to his thinking, however.
“If that was for the win at Homestead, that is a different scenario,” he said. “You are talking about a championship.”
And, he added, if he was racing Keselowski, who barged past the race-leading Gordon on a green/white/checker restart at Texas last fall, cutting a tire that led to the No. 24 Chevrolet spinning out. Gordon had entered the weekend as the points leader but fell to fourth after finishing 29th. He was eliminated the next week when Kevin Harvick won at Phoenix to claim the final championship spot.
Harvick’s slow restart and bumping of Trevor Bayne – which set off a multi-car crash during the final green/white/checker finish at Talladega Superspeedway in this year’s Chase – had drivers such as Kenseth calling foul. But after reviewing the tape and other data, NASCAR decided not to penalize the reigning champion as there was no definitive evidence he intentionally slowed to help protect his position in the points.
After qualifying at Texas on Friday, Harvick said of the Kenseth penalty: “When they believe there’s intent, it’s not going to be fun for you.”
A new frontier?
Kenseth said that he would not change how he races, adding after losing his appeals that he had been “unfairly made the example instead of knowing where the line is and what the penalties are.”
Kenseth is the first Cup driver to be suspended for an in-race incident in the 65-year history of the sport, which under the direction of chairman Brian France adopted a “Boys have at it” policy to encourage drivers to race hard and settle their differences on the track.
France was not available for comment.
Gordon benefitted from NASCAR not making this type of call in 2012, when he targeted and waylaid Clint Bowyer in a fit of revenge in the next-to-last race of the season at Phoenix. Gordon, then eliminated from title contention in the previous iteration of the Chase, effectively ended Bowyer’s outside hopes at a title in repaying a debt from a wreck at Martinsville earlier in the year. Gordon was fined $100,000 and docked 25 points, but avoided a punishment of the severity levied against Kenseth when the line wasn’t darkened.
“NASCAR wanted there to be a line and I like it when they draw a line because so often we hear about judgement calls,” Gordon said. “We don’t like judgement calls. We like things to be clear. And I think we’re all pretty clear now.”
The next incident will tell.
Follow Brant James on Twitter @brantjames
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