Dale Earnhardt Jr. weighs in on precedent NASCAR set with Austin Cindric penalty

Following NASCAR’s ruling on the Austin Cindric right-rear hook of Ty Dillon, everyone in the sport is trying to make sense of it. Did the organization get the call right?

To answer that question, it’s probably best to hone in on what the key questions are. And one of them is simply this: Do the drivers now know where the line is on such incidents?

“I think so, yeah. I think so,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on the Dale Jr. Download. “Listen, drivers are going to complain about this. But they know right-hooking somebody at 180 miles an hour is always bad. And what they would like NASCAR to do is just say, ‘Hey, no right hooks period.’ But NASCAR’s not doing it.”

The incident occurred early in the race, just four laps in. After coming around a corner, Dillon managed to push Austin Cindric off the track to the right side.

Cindric then just waited for his chance on the ensuing straightaway, lined up Dillon and appeared to turn left into his back right bumper. Dillon spun around and hit the wall.

Immediately, questions about whether Austin Cindric might face a severe penalty from NASCAR surfaced. The organization could have suspended him, which would have stripped any playoff points earned during the regular season.

It opted not to. Instead, NASCAR fined Cindric $50,000 and docked him 50 driver points.

“NASCAR’s going to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to let y’all race, we’re going to let y’all make bad decisions. We’re going to let Austin Cindric make a bad decision. We’re going to penalize him, he got 50 damn points,'” Earnhardt said.

Will that level of penalty be enough to deter the Austin Cindric type behavior in the future? That’s the part that remains unclear.

“That’s a freaking race and a half,” Earnhardt said. “I mean if he dominated a race he gets 50 points.”

We’ll have to wait and see on the answer to the question. It’s certainly not a foregone conclusion, and another driver will surely test the limits in races to come.