Austin Cindric has been fined and docked points for hooking Ty Dillon early in Sunday’s race at Circuit of the Americas.
NASCAR fined the Team Penske driver $50,000 and docked him 50 points on Wednesday in its penalty report. Cindric was run off the track by Dillon coming off the final corner. He then returned to the racing surface and hooked Dillon’s Kaulig Racing Chevrolet in the right rear on lap four. Dillon spun twice on the frontstretch and was nearly hit by the oncoming Zane Smith.
In choosing not to suspend Cindric, NASCAR considered the lower speeds on a road course. Chase Elliott was the most recent driver to be suspended for hooking a driver. Elliott’s penalty was issued in May 2023 when he hooked Denny Hamlin off Turn 4 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Before Elliott, Bubba Wallace was suspended for one race after he hooked Kyle Larson on the frontstretch of the 2022 fall race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Mike Forde of NASCAR Communications explained the Cindric penalty on Wednesday’s episode of NASCAR’s ‘Hauler Talk’ podcast.
Said Forde, “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. 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.”
Noah Gragson was penalized in a similar fashion after the Xfinity Series race at Road America in 2022. Gragson intentionally hooked Sage Karam and was fined $35,000 and docked 30 points.
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