Anthony Alfredo fined, docked 25 points for wrecking Stefan Parsons in Xfinity Series Championship at Phoenix

NASCAR has issued a penalty to Anthony Alfredo stemming from the Xfinity Series Championship Race on Saturday at Phoenix Raceway.

Alfredo has been fined $25,000 and docked 25 driver points for an infraction of Sections 4.4.B of the NASCAR rulebook. Despite the penalty, he remains 15th in the final Xfinity Series standings for 2024.

The incident in question occurred on Lap 63 at Phoenix, when Stefan Parsons and Anthony Alfredo made initial contact off Turn 4. That contact caused Alfredo’s No. 5 car to brush the outside retaining wall.

In the dogleg section of the 1-mile oval, Alfredo then spun Parsons with a right rear hook, sending Parsons into the wall.

The day ended disappointingly for Anthony Alfredo, with a failure to finish the race after a flat tire sent him into the wall on Lap 156. He finished the day in 36th place.

Should NASCAR change playoff format?

While Anthony Alfredo was involved in some drama in the Xfinity Series Championship Race, there was remarkably little drama in the Cup Series finale.

Joey Logano was not the best in the regular season. But he won three of the final ten races of the season, and second most races all year. He had four wins, five if you count the All-Star Race.

Jeff Gluck of The Athletic was not so excited after the race Sunday. In fact, he essentially spelled D-O-O-M for NASCAR if the playoff format isn’t fixed on The Teardown.

“I think if you don’t make a change I think it’s going to come back to bite everybody,” Gluck said. “I think the majority, okay, maybe you’re right maybe I’m just too caught up in the social media world. But the people I hear from, the people I talk to, they don’t like the champion being decided like this. So that’s all I can go on.

“I don’t have people saying, ‘This is great, what are you talking about, you’re an idiot, stop, shut up, stop being so negative.’ I don’t get a ton of that. I get, ‘Man, this is not what we’re looking for.’ So, maybe you hear differently, but I just don’t know where NASCAR goes from here. Because I think it weakens the credibility of what a champion should be, and we should be celebrating after moments like this, by saying ‘This was the best of the year, they went out and proved it, period.’”

On3’s Jonathan Howard also contributed to this report.