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NASCAR to further examine Austin Cindric, Ty Dillon incident at COTA

Nick Profile Picby:Nick Geddes•about 9 hours•

NickGeddesNews

Austin Cindric
Peter Casey-Imagn Images

NASCAR Cup Series managing director Brad Moran said they will further examine the incident between Austin Cindric and Ty Dillon from Sunday’s race at COTA to determine if it warrants a penalty.

“Yeah, unfortunately, that happened early on in the race, so there was not a caution at that point for it,” Moran said Tuesday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “But we are going to go back, and that’s on our list today, so we’ll have a look at that and see if there was something there that we do not like, and if there is, we’ll have to deal with it.”

On Lap 4, Dillon pushed Cindric off the track. Cindric then caught up and leaned into the right rear bumper of Dillon, hooking him and causing him to spin into the wall. Both drivers continued on in the race, Cindric finishing 25th and Dillon coming across the start/finish line 28th.

Dillon called out Cindric after the race.

“A frustrating day,” Dillon said. “We made a pass and got hooked [by Cindric] on Lap 4. That destroyed the whole right front of our car. We battled back from that all day; we just didn’t have the downforce we needed without a right front on it. We did all we could with our Sea Best Chevy.”

NASCAR Insider: Suspension coming for Austin Cindric for Ty Dillon retaliation?

The question now is whether NASCAR will penalize Cindric for the move and, if so, in what fashion. The sanctioning body has penalized similar incidents in the recent past, tagging Carson Hocevar for an intentional spinning of Harrison Burton under caution last season.

But Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic is unsure how NASCAR will handle this particular incident.

“I don’t know how NASCAR handles this, because it almost, the precedent’s been set,” Bianchi said on The Teardown podcast. “We’ve seen the last few years how these things go. It’s really tough. It’s not a high-speed area of the track, they’re just kind of coming through a corner. Not like they’re at the top of the hill or anything like that at speed. It’s really tough to look at this and say, ‘Is this suspension worthy?’ Because I do feel like if you suspend it for this, the box is really, really open.”

On3’s Thomas Goldkamp contributed to this report.