Daniel Suarez on Chase Elliott Chicago incident: 'Just because I was paying attention... He's not getting a fine?'

An intense weekend at Chicago led to multiple post-race scuffles, and Daniel Suarez is lightly questioning NASCAR’s enforcement of the code of conduct rule after Chase Elliott made some aggressive passes at him late in the race.

While Suarez mostly avoided contact with Elliott, he was unclear why in one instance a driver intentionally going after another would result in a penalty but in another it did not.

The former, of course, was Bubba Wallace slamming into the door of Alex Bowman while Bowman was not paying attention during a cool-down lap. Wallace was fined $50,000 by NASCAR for the incident.

Chase Elliott’s attempts to hit Daniel Suarez drew no such penalty.

“He was trying to hit me under caution a few times but he never made contact with me,” Suarez said Saturday, according to RACER magazine’s Kelly Crandall. “So it’s a delicate situation because what happens if I wasn’t paying attention and I was getting hit. He was going to get fined?”

The application of the rule seems at least mildly inconsistent, though it’s hard to advocate for a penalty when no real definitive contact was actually made.

Still, Daniel Suarez questioned the entire ordeal.

“Just because I was paying attention and didn’t get hit, he’s not getting a fine?” Suarez said. “That’s a little bit tricky. I think that’s a very big penalty to pay $50,000 for hitting somebody. I’m not saying that Chase should have got fined, I don’t think he should have, but it’s a big fine.”

The main thing Daniel Suarez said he was looking for was more consistency in the rulings from NASCAR.

“A lot of people have done similar things this year,” he said. “The 19 (car of Martin Truex Jr.) did it in Richmond. In the past we have seen it several times. And it’s fine. If that’s going to be the fine, that’s fine, but it has to be consistent. And I think that NASCAR is trying their best to be consistent, but we’re not quite there yet.”