NASCAR came into a lot of criticism over the way they handled the incident involving William Byron and Denny Hamlin.
Byron hit Hamlin’s No. 11 under caution as a reaction to an earlier incident between the two drivers during the race at Texas Motor Speedway and he admitted doing so intentionally.
As a result of the incident, NASCAR fined him $50,000 and docked 25 driver and owner points. However, NASAR were careless not to monitor the incident in time as NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Scott Miller admitted after the race that they missed the accident when it happened.
“They missed it? What a f**k joke” – Denny Hamlin hits back at Scott Miller missed penalty claim
If they had done so, they would have sent Byron to the rear of the field and they could also have allowed Hamlin to retain his position.
Hamlin showed his frustration on NASCAR by tweeting: “They missed it? What a f*#k joke. It played on the screen 5 times during caution.”
Byron’s teammate Kyle Larson said that NASCAR made a bigger mistake than Byron.
“They both made mistakes,” Kyle Larson, Byron’s teammate, said during a September 28 appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “William made a mistake and NASCAR, I feel like, in the end, probably made a bigger mistake by claiming that they missed it.”
Another person to agree with this opinion was Dale Earnhardt Jr. who even went further by saying that NASCAR didn’t miss the incident but said so to hide their shortcomings.
However, Joey Logano took NASCAR’s side by asserting that such decisions have to be taken carefully and NASCAR rightly did so.
“You’ve got to have a little bit of grace for NASCAR on this,” Logano said. “You’re making a decision that impacts someone’s whole season because it’s during the playoffs. It impacts their whole season, and if you make a wrong call on this, ooh, it’s going to be a black eye on you.
“So taking your time to make the right call and understanding the whole situation. If you have the ability to take time, you should always take time.”
It remains to be seen how the point deduction will affect Byron’s season. He is currently in 10th place, 8 points behind the cut line. His team, Hendrick Motorsports have confirmed that they will appeal the decision.