In the wake of NASCAR’s decision to uphold Austin Dillon’s penalty, much has been made of the process itself. NASCAR president Steve Phelps is standing behind that process.

In an interview on the Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast, Phelps broke down the responsibility NASCAR has to penalize drivers when they’re out of line to uphold the integrity of the sport. That’s a mission entrusted to the competition team, headed up by senior vice president Elton Sawyer.

“Listen, honestly Kevin, we don’t want to penalize drivers,” Phelps said. “We don’t want to have cars not pass tech. All of that we don’t want. But there is a responsibility if you are going to be fair about the rules that you’re going to put in place and then officiate, that you have to do it with the utmost integrity. I believe that our officials right now, Elton Sawyer and his team, they have the utmost integrity. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone that doesn’t believe that Elton Sawyer doesn’t have the most integrity of someone that’s been in his position.”

Austin Dillon appealed his penalty, which included a playoff eligibility ban based on his win at Richmond, on Wednesday. His appeal was denied, though Richard Childress Racing plans to appeal that decision too.

Phelps didn’t dive much into the particulars of Austin Dillon’s case but instead discussed generally how the NASCAR penalty and appeals process works.

“The decision is varied, each of those is unique and we have to treat it as unique,” Phelps said. “So they essentially will come back, they’ll look at all the data. They’ll try to figure out in their minds what happened.

“I think the difficulty as it relates to this specific incidence, and I’ve heard from drivers over the years, ‘I don’t know where the line is, tell me where the line is. Can you show me the line?’ And I’m like, ‘I can’t show you the line but you will know when it has been crossed, right?’ So if you hook someone going 170 miles per hour on a mile-and-a-half track you have crossed the line and we are going to park you. So we’ve been consistent. We’ve had two of those.”

Phelps once again relayed that NASCAR would prefer not to punish drivers if at all possible. The sport is designed to be free-flowing, within certain parameters.

Driver safety, though, must be accounted for.

“And when you have a situation like that it’s not safe,” Phelps said.

In the driving sequence in question at Richmond, Austin Dillon wiped out two racers in the blink of an eye to take the win. It was likely the second contact that got him into hot water.

“I think as we were looking at, again, the data and what happened, it happened so quickly,” Phelps said. “But you had two incidents in a split second, right? Turn 3, had an incident. Turn 4, you had an incident and the race was concluded.

“I think the bump-and-run or slam-and-run or whatever it was (on Joey Logano), right, I won’t suggest that there wouldn’t have been a penalty, I have no idea. Because you had a second move, and the second move was a hook, in our opinion, which was both the eye test as well as the data would suggest that’s what happened. It’s hard to hide from the data. Then he put a competitor also at risk. Denny (Hamlin) took a hard hit, one of the hardest hits I think he’s had in this NextGen car. There was a line that was crossed in our opinion.”

Austin Dillon has already filed one appeal but his team will file another to the Final Appeals Officer.

“So they will have the ability to appeal it and they will,” Phelps said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen there, but again, it is a decision that ultimately is; a recommendation is made by the competition group, and then it goes up to senior management. And if we don’t believe that they’ve got it wrong, like significantly wrong, we will not overturn their decision. It is their decision. They are the experts in this space.

“Did it go to Steve and Jim and myself? It did. And we weighed in and we thought they got it right, and that’s why the penalty was issued.”