Dale Earnhardt Jr. has weighed in on the penalties NASCAR handed out after this past weekend’s Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.
To the surprise of many, Kyle Busch wasn’t penalized for intentionally wrecking John Hunter Nemechek during a late race run-in. However, driver Ryan Preece was fined $50,000 and was even forced to forfeit 25 points for intentionally taking out Ty Gibbs. That penalty dropped Preece out of the top 12 in the NASCAR Cup Series standings.
The incident between Preece and Gibbs came during lap 101, when Preece appeared to drive into the back of the #54 car and send him spinning into the outside wall, bringing his race to an end. Interestingly enough, earlier in the race, Preece had voiced his frustration with Gibbs over the radio when the #54 car drove hard into turn one and slid up close to the his car, giving him no other choice to but to let off the gas.
That ended up costing him several spots, and Preece immediately took to the radio afterwards to vent about Gibbs:
“What a f***ing idiot that kid is. He is so lucky his car is so f***ing fast… When I get to that 54, I’m done with him. F***ing idiot. … I can’t stand when idiots like him have fast race cars that they can do stupid s**t and get away with it. End of rant.”
Later on in the race, there appeared to be some contact between Preece and Gibbs, and NASCAR apparently saw enough in the footage to slap the driver of the #60 car with a penalty:
Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t think assessing Preece with a penalty was the right thing to do, especially since Kyle Busch wasn’t penalized for what he may or may not have done at the end of the race.
The NASCAR legend took to the Dirty Mo Media social media page to post a video about his thoughts on the matter:
“Just seeing the news that NASCAR penalized Ryan Preece for what happened Sunday during the race, and no penalty for Kyle Busch. We already put out our video with our thoughts. I didn’t think either one would get penalized. I honestly don’t agree with this one. If you’re not going to penalize Kyle, which I didn’t think they would, I don’t think you can penalize Preece.
If you watch the in-car footage, the 54 just drives across his nose. Even though we know what Preece said over the radio and after the race, he could still argue that, in that moment, the 24 cut him off and came down in front of him. I’m just really, really surprised by this decision. This is quite an interesting turn of events. I didn’t see this one coming.”
I think I’ve got to side with Dale Jr. on this one.
Preece defended himself and his actions during an interview on SiriusXM. The driver admitted that he wasn’t going to cut Gibbs any breaks, but he feels as though he didn’t actually touch him:
“I was right there and I felt like he came down, and I was not going to cut him a break because in the past, him and I have had problems. So I’ve got a little bit of a short fuse with him and I, with how we’re racing. And that was just one of those situations that, could I cut him a break? Probably could have, but I didn’t. And ultimately, I didn’t feel like I hit him. I felt like I stayed right on him, and he got loose, and from there on, unfortunately, he wrecked.”
If only NASCAR saw it the same way.
