While NASCAR Cup Series’ title finale wasn’t too dramatic, its penultimate offering at Martinsville offered plenty of controversy.
Championship 4 contender Christopher Bell was disqualified from the race after riding the wall during the final lap – someone considered to be almost guaranteed a spot in the final four.
A further three drivers were fined $100,000 (£79,200) each and docked 50 points for race manipulation, while their teams received the same punishments too.
Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon were all out of the race for the title, so it was easy for them to try and influence the race – but they were at least punished for it, while others got away with it.
Joey Logano warns NASCAR to not ‘look like F1’
The manipulation is something which eventual champion Joey Logano could spot while driving at the time.
He took a cheeky dig at Formula 1 when discussing what to do about the manipulators of the race that didn’t communicate over the radio – making their actions a little more unclear.
“It gets tricky for NASCAR I believe, because how do you prove it [manipulation]? The #20, pretty easy to see, he rode the wall, can’t do that, that’s a black-and-white rule, easy call,” he told Kevin Harvick for the NASCAR on FOX YouTube channel.
“The others, easy call, because you heard them talking on the radio. That communication over the radio, pretty obvious. If there wasn’t that communication on the radio, how do you make that call?
“That gets pretty tough. It was pretty obvious to the naked eye, what was going on, even if there’s nothing ever said. Like, I saw it happen in front of me,” he continued.
“If they didn’t say it on the radio, are they going to make that call though? I don’t know, but we have to do something or else we’re going to look like F1.”
Were the punishments handed out fair?
As Logano mentioned, one of the main problems for NASCAR is that they require reasonable proof before they can start dishing out penalties.
Without a clear violation of the rules (wall-riding or radio communication), it’s hard to distinguish whether a driver had the intent to change the outcome of a race.
The three-time Cup Series champion believes it was clear to see from his car, but not doing anything about it would make the sport look like Formula 1 according to him.
Every motorsport has its own way of dealing with such controversies, and the punishments that NASCAR handed out weren’t met with a lot of backlash.
Generally speaking, that means they hit the nail on the head, and it might be something that Formula 1 can learn from, but there’s more to be done on behalf of the drivers who influenced the race more passively.