NASCAR: Tyler Dippel is owed a massive apology

Tyler Dippel’s name was run through the mud in the NASCAR community over the last week. As it turns out, he is no criminal, and he is owed a massive apology.

When NASCAR Truck Series driver Tyler Dippel was suspended indefinitely by NASCAR last Friday, nobody knew why, and when the “why” emerged, it was fairly vague.

He was reportedly suspended for violating the Member Conduct Guidelines of the NASCAR Rule Book. Specifically, he was said to have violated Section 12.1, which has to do with actions detrimental to stock car racing.

This news set the NASCAR world ablaze.

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Criticism and insults were hurled at the 19-year-old Walkill, New York native from every which way, even though nobody criticizing and insulting him actually knew what he did.

When it emerged that he had been charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree, a Class A misdemeanor, this criticism worsened, as you might expect.

But in the midst of this public criticism, a report issued by Dirt Track Digest’s Jay Carpinello effectively cleared him of all wrongdoing. This report was a bombshell report, and people needed to be aware of it.

They needed to know that their criticism was based on a big fat lie and completely uncalled for.

Sure enough, the following day, Dippel’s criminal charge was dropped, and he was reinstated by NASCAR.

But it doesn’t end here, nor can we afford to let it.

This is a 19-year-old kid we’re talking about. He’s working his way up the NASCAR ranks, driving in dirt races when he’s not behind the wheel of his #02 Chevrolet, and doing everything he can do to gain more experience and to improve with his future at the forefront of his mind.

While I do include the police and NASCAR on the list of people/organizations that owe Dippel an apology, I don’t blame them for what happened. Mistakes happen, and at the end of the day, Dippel was, in fact, innocent until proven guilty — and above all, he was never proven guilty. In fact, he was basically proven innocent.

I do, however, blame one thing: social media.

Social media has made it far too easy for the average @NASCARfan2184511 to make his opinion, based on absolutely no facts whatsoever, known to the world, and to make things worse, people are always angry on social media.

Always.

If that isn’t a scientifically proven fact, it should be.

Giving them a target at which to aim with their anger is not a good recipe, but it is exactly what they long for. They live for such opportunities.

On social media, everybody is guilty until proven innocent, and even when proven innocent, there are still those who will claim the subject in question is guilty, and there are those who want to influence others to believe the lies.

There are still people who insist Dippel is guilty, if you can believe that. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority now see the light.

But as bad as that is, the biggest problem with this is that it wasn’t just the average @NASCARfan2184511 mouthing off about the kid.

There were rather prominent figures in the NASCAR world running his name through the mud, telling him to “grow up” among other ridiculous things. People ridiculed him for “bringing down his team” and letting down those who had counted on him and who had invested in him.

Naturally, people listened. People bought in. They formed their opinions based on the hate, the criticism — the pure, straight-up garbage.

Brad Keselowski said it best.

Of course, there have been those who have apologized. Todd Bodine, one of the most outspoken critics of Dippel, reached out to him, and Dippel expressed his appreciation for that gesture specifically.

Bodine responded.

Hopefully everyone else follows his lead.

Fortunately, Tyler Dippel only missed one race, this past Sunday’s race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, and fortunately (yet unfortunately), this didn’t matter a ton because he didn’t qualify for the NASCAR Truck Series playoffs anyway.

The rookie driver sits in 13th place in the championship standings with three top 10 finishes, including a career-high third place finish in the regular season finale at Michigan International Speedway, and an average finish of 15.29.

But what happened and how it unfolded is far deeper than simply missing a race over nothing, and there are still thousands of people out there who owe him a huge apology.

When he gets back behind the wheel of the #02 Chevrolet for the next race, the World of Westgate 200, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Las Vegas, Nevada on Friday, September 13, he better get nothing less than a standing ovation.

What he has gone through over the last week and how he has responded (read his statement here) has been a display of pure class that probably not many, if any, of the people who brought him down are capable of displaying.