Here’s Why NASCAR Penalized Sammy Smith Without Using Its New Suspension Rule

NASCAR has a driving standards problem. On-track retaliations and intentional wrecks have been prevalent ever since a series executive declared, “boys, have at it” ahead of the 2010 season. The series has begun to push back in the past few years, however, with penalties on drivers who wreck opponents — and this year, NASCAR implemented a new suspension rule that has the possibility to derail a driver’s season over an on-track infraction.

Yet so far, NASCAR hasn’t used it. Here’s why the series did not consider using that massively detrimental rule after a big moment last weekend.

The infraction in question happened on the last lap of Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Martinsville. Joe Gibbs Racing’s Taylor Gray led a lap and a half from an overtime restart over JR Motorsports driver Sammy Smith, and looked set to win the race when he headed into turn 3 for the final time. Smith then bowled into Gray, wrecking the leader and starting a pile-up that led to Austin Hill winning from seventh.

If Smith were suspended a race for causing the crash, he would have been hit with a major new penalty built into NASCAR’s playoff waiver system. That suspension would have required Smith to get a waiver for any races he would miss, which would in turn mean he would no longer be eligible to bring any playoff points into the postseason. Every other driver would come into the sport’s arcane knockout playoff format with the points they earned during the season, but Smith would not. Thus, the penalty would have made advancement significantly more difficult in each of the first three rounds of the format.

Instead, Smith was docked 50 points and fined $25,000. That penalty’s impact is still huge, equivalent to around a race win worth of regular season points, but it becomes irrelevant if Smith advances to the postseason on a win anyway. Because of the way NASCAR’s point resets work, the choice to dock points rather than suspend effectively means Smith is impacted only in the more forgiving regular season.

While the outcome of a suspension has greatly changed, NASCAR’s policies around handing out suspensions have, apparently, not. A NASCAR representative tells Road & Track that the series “does not take into account the new waiver rule in regards to eliminating playoff points when making that decision [to suspend.] We view that as two different rules, and that has not come into the decision making when discussing suspensions.”

On Wednesday, Xfinity Series director Eric Peterson clarified a few other elements of the decision on NASCAR’s own Hauler Talk podcast. Peterson noted that the series did not consider an in-race penalty, which would have been handed down immediately rather than mid-week.

“Waiting allows us the time to look at driver team audio, look at SMT data, driver interviews, that kind of thing, to put the pieces of the puzzle together before making this decision,” he said. “I think the most important thing is that we get the decision right instead of having the decision right now.”

Peterson noted that NASCAR wants to see “really hard racing, and door-to-door racing, and contact is certainly a part of the sport,” but said “what Sammy [Smith] did was over the line and something that we had to react to.”

Yet NASCAR has not absolutely defined either what that line is, or what the standard penalty for crossing it will be going forward. This season, the general trend through two incidents has been that a single intentional wreck for position will lead to a major penalty, but not a suspension.

NASCAR’s strengthened focus on driving standard penalties follows a major incident at Richmond in the Cup Series regular season finale last season. Austin Dillon, who needed a win in the race to advance to the series playoffs, was involved in two separate last-corner wrecks that each took out different leaders on his way to a victory. That moment led to an enormous penalty, including Dillon’s effective removal from the Cup Series playoffs.

While NASCAR has sometimes suspended drivers for intentional wrecks, the series does not necessarily always give drivers a week off for the maneuver. In 2022 and 2023, Bubba Wallace and Chase Elliott each received a suspension for an intentional wreck on a faster intermediate oval, but Denny Hamlin was given just a 25-point penalty with no suspension for a similar intentional wreck at the slower Phoenix Raceway in-between those two incidents. Austin Dillon’s suite of penalties for his actions at Richmond also did not include a suspension.

The new rule dropping playoff points for drivers who take waivers — which applies to a variety of other playoff waivers, in addition to those given out for suspensions — can be seen as a tool to further enhance the power of penalties related to driving standards. NASCAR has not suspended a driver for on-track conduct yet this season. Austin Cindric was similarly fined and docked 50 points for a clash with Ty Dillon in the Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas, although that move was not for a win. Martinsville and COTA are both relatively slow tracks compared to the intermediate ovals where Wallace and Elliott earned their suspensions.