William Byron forced to pay for NASCAR’s mistake

NASCAR docked William Byron 25 points following the playoff race at Texas Motor Speedway to make up for their own mistake.

One of the major talking points following Sunday’s round of 12 NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Texas Motor Speedway was the incident between William Byron and Denny Hamlin.

Byron felt that Hamlin had not left him enough room coming off of turn two a few laps prior, resulting in slight contact with the wall, and decided to run into the back of Hamlin when the caution flag flew due to Martin Truex Jr.’s flat tire and subsequent crash.

The contact between Byron’s #24 Chevrolet and Hamlin’s #11 Toyota resulted in a spin through the infield for the latter. Despite complaints from Hamlin and his team over the radio, Hamlin was not allowed to retain his position, and Byron was not penalized.

After the race, NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Scott Miller admitted that, unlike literally everybody else watching, NASCAR had completely missed the accident when it took place.

He said that had they been paying attention to what was going on, they would have sent Byron to the rear of the field and/or allowed Hamlin to retain his position, which was one spot ahead of Byron.

While there is little doubt that Byron deserved a penalty for his own mistake, his penalty ended up being worse than it would have been, and that was the case for no other reason than the fact that NASCAR made a mistake simply by not paying attention.

NASCAR docked Byron 25 points in the standings, and they also issued him a $50,000 fine.

Byron ended up finishing the race in seventh place, so a 25-point penalty effectively meant he scored what he would have scored with a 32nd place result.

Considering the fact that 25 cars finished on the lead lap, Byron would have finished, at worst, in 25th place had NASCAR done what they should have done to begin with. He would have finished, at worst, with effectively an 18-point penalty, and it likely wouldn’t have even been that bad since he would have had time to make up a few spots.

While parking him would have resulted in a 30th place finish, which would ultimately have amounted to a 23-point penalty, that wasn’t a scenario which Miller presented.

Prior to the penalty, Byron had been in third place in the standings through the first of three races on the round of 12 schedule, and he had been 17 points above the round of 8 cut line. Now he has dropped below seven more drivers and sits in 10th place, eight points below the cut line.

The last spot above the cut line had been occupied by Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott with 3,045 points, and the first spot below the cut line had been occupied by Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe with 3,041.

Briscoe now occupies the last spot above the cut line, while Team Penske rookie Austin Cindric occupies the first spot below it with 3,034.

Here is an updated look at the playoff picture.

1. Joey Logano – 3,071 (+37, was +30)
2. Ross Chastain – 3,059 (+25, was +18)
3. Kyle Larson – 3,057 (+23, was +16)
4. Ryan Blaney – 3,056 (+22, was +15)
5. Denny Hamlin – 3,049 (+15, was +8)
6. Daniel Suarez – 3,045 (+11, was +4)
7. Chase Elliott – 3,045 (+11, was +4)
8. Chase Briscoe – 3,041 (+7, was -4)
   ———ROUND OF 8 CUT LINE———
9. Austin Cindric – 3,034 (-7, was -11)
10. William Byron – 3,033 (-8, was +17)
11. Christopher Bell – 3,016 (-25, was -29)
12. Alex Bowman – 3,015 (-26, was -30)

The round of 12 is set to continue this Sunday, October 2 with the YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. The race is set to be broadcast live on NBC beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET, so be sure to begin a free trial of FuboTV now if you haven’t already done so!