NASCAR insider demands action be taken after Martinsville Xfinity Series chaos

Following the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Martinsville Speedway, everyone was thinking the same thing – what the Hell? Sammy Smith and his actions at the end of the race were awful, but there was more to it than the last lap.

So, what needs to happen? NASCAR stepped in, sort of, and fined Smith and gave him a points penalty. But again, this went beyond Smith and his actions. It was everywhere in the field!

Poor driving, disregard for others, and plain wrecking people with half a race to go. That is what the NASCAR Xfinity Series gave us at Martinsville.

On The Teardown podcast, Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic broke things down from his perspective after the race. He wants to see instant action from NASCAR officials when these moments happen.

“Well, here’s the other part to this. Real quick,” Bianchi said to his co-host Jeff Gluck. “We go back to last fall, it took them 27, 28 minutes, whatever to make a decision after the race. I don’t want a repeat of that. Like, if you’re going to go down that road, that’s fine. You have to clean up the Xfinity Series, you cannot continue down this path; you have to do something.

“I don’t want races to conclude and everybody is sitting there on pit road for nearly 30 minutes … It almost has to be instantaneous. If you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to make this quicker and in the moment instead of this drawn-out process of going back and looking at everything. I don’t know if we’re ready for that yet; I don’t know if NASCAR is ready for that yet.”

NASCAR at Martinsville is special. It is old-school short-track racing. The thing that made stock car racing what it is today. Beating and banging are all part of the program. However, there has always been a fine line between rubbing is racing and rubbing leading to wrecking.

Did NASCAR punish Sammy Smith enough? Probably not. I also don’t think it is a great look for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to more or less say people expecting him to sit Sammy were being silly. I don’t think it is silly at all. Why wouldn’t Earnhardt step in, and what would it take to make that decision to pull a driver from a seat if NASCAR isn’t willing to do it?

The fix for what happened at Martinsville is not easy. NASCAR can talk to drivers about what happened and what they expect moving forward. Without concrete punishments, preferably during the race or right after, the nonsense is likely to continue.