Things got a little heated on Saturday at Phoenix Raceway between two drivers in the DC Solar 200. The incident involved drivers Austin Dillon and Cole Custer with nine laps remaining in the 200-lap, 200-mile event.
Custer and Dillon were racing hard for the seventh position as they entered turn one. The two drivers then made contact, sending the No. 2 Chevrolet of Austin Dillon into the outside wall. While spinning, Ryan Sieg in his No. 39 Chevrolet had nowhere to go and made contact with Dillon.
Dillon wasn’t happy at Custer and went slow around the track waiting for the No. 00 Ford. That’s when he made additional contact to show his displeasure for Custer. NASCAR then told the No. 2 team that they were done for the day and to take the car to the garage.
NASCAR also called Dillon, crew chief Justin Alexander, and his spotter to the NASCAR hauler following the race. Custer, who continued in the event following the contact, finished 21st on the leaderboard.
Custer took the blame for the incident after the race.
“It was 100% my fault. I got in there too deep, got really loose going in and couldn’t put any wheel into it. That was pretty much it. Just all my fault,” Custer said after the race. “Something that won’t happen again. We had a great race leading up to that. We didn’t start out at all how we wanted to but by the end we were probably a fifth to eighth place car. I thought that was a really good sign for us. I thought we had a really good Haas Automation Ford. It is unfortunate I cost us and the 2 car there”
Dillon spoke shortly after the incident outside the care center.
“I haven’t really seen the replay. He just took us out,” said a frustrated Austin Dillon after visiting the infield care center on FOX. “Just driving over his head and just overdrove the corner. Missed the corner and took me out with him. It was a hard hit, but it sucks.”
“I don’t think it’ll be that bad. We’ll probably just have a Coke (Coca-Cola) and discuss things and it’ll be all good,” said Dillon on his upcoming visit to the NASCAR hauler.
This comes after tensions got heated last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway between Kyle Busch and Joey Logano. NASCAR did not penalize neither Busch or Logano after the incident because the two settled it out on pit road. However, because this involved Dillon trying to wreck Custer on the track under caution, it might not turn out the same.
“We’re very clear that we’re not going to allow a car to be used as a weapon,” O’Donnell said after the meeting with Busch and Logano on Friday. “We didn’t see that in this case. We looked at this as good, hard racing. That’s when we will react — if there’s an intentional something that happens on the racetrack, we’ll have to react.”
If NASCAR does decide to penalize Dillon for this incident, it will more than likely be announced on Wednesday.
About Me: Brett has been following the sport of NASCAR since the beginning of the 2006 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. Since Brett was 13, he has had a passion of chasing a job in sports that not many get the opportunity of doing. He has been in the NASCAR media since the middle of the 2010 season. Since then, he has been a part of many racing podcast shows to improve his talents. He has written for racingonfuel.com and theracingwheel.com. Currently, Brett writes for motorsportsnat.com and TracksideChatter.com. You can find him on twitter @NASCAR_Brett.
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