NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio during his weekly appearance that the sanctioning body will not suspend or penalize Austin Cindric for Sunday’s wreck with Austin Dillon.
Cindric’s No. 2 Team Penske Ford connected with the right rear of Dillon’s No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet late in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Worldwide Technology Raceway while battling for 12th place. The contact sent Dillon into the No. 47 of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Cindric would finish 13th in the race, with Dillon and Stenhouse slipping to 31st and 32nd, respectively.
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“We didn‘t see anything that really would rise to a level that would be a suspension or a penalty,” Sawyer said. “It looked like hard racing. One car coming up a little bit and another car going down. …
“As we said last week, we take these incidents very seriously when we see cars that are turned head-on into another car or head-on into the wall. I spent a lot of time (Monday) looking at that, looking at all the data, looking at TV footage and just deemed this one really hard racing.”
The on-track incident received extra scrutiny Monday, especially following NASCAR’s one-race suspension of Chase Elliott the week prior. The sanctioning body ruled Elliott intentionally wrecked Denny Hamlin at Charlotte Motor Speedway, sitting the Hendrick Motorsports driver for one week as a result.
Dillon had called for a similar penalty on Cindric after being checked and released from the infield care center, saying: “I was wrecked intentionally by (Cindric), hooked right … he better be suspended next week.”
Cindric disagreed with Dillon’s assessment, according to the Team Penske driver’s social media post:
— Austin Cindric (@AustinCindric) June 6, 2023
And as Sawyer said, the data did not indicate this incident should rise to the level of a penalty or suspension.
Sawyer also said NASCAR officials would meet with Dillon and Cindric ahead of Sonoma weekend.