The dust has settled from Michigan, but already the focus has shifted back to Austin Dillon and whether his penalty appeal will produce any results with NASCAR.
Dillon is set to have his appeal on Wednesday morning.
Denny Hamlin, one of the victims of Dillon’s aggressive late driving, actually thinks there’s a small chance that Dillon could even have the win from the Cook Out 400 stripped from him if the hearing goes poorly.
“They’ve made penalties worse, absolutely,” Hamlin said on his Actions Detrimental podcast. “Oh I think it’s a less than 5% chance. I think it’s just going to stay the way it is.”
The talk around NASCAR has been whether the sport might rescind the playoff ban and allow Dillon to use his win toward playoff eligibility despite the manner in which it occurred.
Hamlin’s even heard the talk on one of NASCAR’s most popular podcasts.
“I heard on the Teardown today when they were like, I guess they asked Jordan (Bianchi) and (Jeff) Gluck and one said it was like 5% or something like that and the other said 33%,” Hamlin said. “I think it’s like 10% that it changes. Maybe it’s higher. Maybe it’s 20%. Just take all the penalty away? I just think that NASCAR has, they have protected theirself with the language that allows them to do essentially whatever they want.”
Hamlin pointed out that one thing NASCAR has done over the years is constantly tweak its rulebook to make sure it’s capturing all potential outcomes.
The fact that the sport had a rule precisely designed to allow NASCAR to penalize a playoff berth without stripping a win away is testament to that.
“Yeah, every year and even during the year NASCAR constantly updates its rulebooks,” Hamlin said. “And so, again, I think they were so displeased with the Hendrick outcome that they changed, they really made an effort in the offseason to hem up any of the ‘you can’t make up your own’ penalty. It either has to be what we said it is or not.”
Those tweaks to the rulebook provide NASCAR with enough cover to stick to the initial ruling, Hamlin said.
“I think that they have just enough language to govern the sport how they see fit,” Hamlin said. “The old actions detrimental, in the rulebook, you might need, maybe Austin Dillon should go in and say, ‘All right, well what is detrimental?’ That’s not the right way to go up on a NASCAR panel, but it’s, you could say, ‘What’s detrimental? Look at all the engagement that this got. This isn’t detrimental.’
“NASCAR, I’m playing both sides here, NASCAR would say, ‘It’s detrimental to sport, the game we play, we have to govern the sport to make sure it’s played properly. And that’s on us, and we’ve chosen to throw a flag on this one.’”
