NASCAR managing director pressed on why Austin Cindric was not suspended

Mike Forde, NASCAR’s manager director of racing communications, revealed how NASCAR made its surprising ruling on Austin Cindric after he hooked Ty Dillon at the COTA race. On the Hauler Talk podcast, Forde was asked why Cindric was not suspended for his actions.

“The reason we landed on a points and fine – we take every situation, every violation as its own unique incident, and I know probably fans don’t love hearing that sentence, and it’s said a lot,” Forde said. “But it’s said because it has to be said. It’s said because it’s true. Sure, we do look at past instances to help inform us, educate ourselves on how we should handle each subsequent one. But each incident is very different. Maybe not very different but each is at least a little bit different and often times very different.

“In this case, we did feel it was significantly different than the previous two. And the reasons are, you look at it, it is at a road course (with) lower speed, tight confines to begin with and the result didn’t even draw a caution. Now, obviously, the caution flag doesn’t come out as quickly on road courses anyway, but that did not draw a caution. So, those were really the reasons why we chose to err on the side of letting him race this weekend in Phoenix.”

NASCAR managing director beleives the right call was made on Austin Cindric

The two incidents Forde mentioned are Chase Elliott hooking Denny Hamlin in 2023 and Bubba Wallace hooking Kyle Larson in 2022. Elliott and Wallace were each suspended for one race.

Cindric was fined $50,000 and lost 30 driving points. Forde knows fans will express their frustrations about Cindric not being suspended but believes NASCAR made the right call.

“When I hit social media after this penalty is announced, my guess is that there’s going to be several people who’ll feel this is the wrong call, and it may not be the popular call,” Forde said. “When we look at penalties, we do not really care how popular we are. We try to do the right thing here.

“What we felt was the right thing was this penalty. We felt that if we suspended him, the punishment wouldn’t fit the crime. It was probably going to be too severe of a punishment. We felt the right thing to do was hit his wallet, hit his points wallet and fine him $50,000 and 50 driver points.”