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NASCAR to Further Investigate Wallace, Dillon, Chastain for Race Manipulation

Elton Sawyer says NASCAR will further investigate Bubba Wallace, Austin Dillon, and Ross Chastain for the role they played in the end of Sunday's XFINITY 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

Joseph Srigley

While the NASCAR Playoffs drivers were the major storyline, Austin Dillon, Bubba Wallace, and Ross Chastain all played major roles in the outcome of the event -- which NASCAR will investigate this week.
While the NASCAR Playoffs drivers were the major storyline, Austin Dillon, Bubba Wallace, and Ross Chastain all played major roles in the outcome of the event -- which NASCAR will investigate this week. / Photo by Jacy Norgaard, HHP for Chevy Racing

As the laps wound down in Sunday’s XFINITY 500 at Martinsville Speedway, the cameras were focused on race-leader Ryan Blaney, and post-season drivers William Byron and Christopher Bell, as they fought to determine which would clinch a Championship 4 berth.

Byron and Bell were the main characters of this story and spent the final 15 laps of Sunday’s event separated by just a single point. However, there are definitely some background characters that haven’t gone totally unnoticed.

Whether it was intentional or not, Bubba Wallace (No. 23), Austin Dillon (No. 3), and Ross Chastain (No. 1) all played a role in the outcome of the event.

Wallace drives a Toyota-backed entry for 23XI Racing, which has a relationship with Joe Gibbs Racing – the team that fields Christopher Bell’s No. 20. Meanwhile, both Dillon and Chastain drive for Chevrolet-backed organizations, Richard Childress Racing and Trackhouse Racing.

NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer, said in a post-race press conference that the sanctioning body will look into the late-race actions at Martinsville, and decide whether additional penalties are required.

"Yeah, we'll look at everything," said Sawyer. "As I said earlier, we want to go back, as we would have done anyway. We'll get back, we'll take all the data, video. We'll listen to in-car audio. We'll do all that, as we would any event."

The 27-minute deliberation following the checkered flag, though, Sawyer says was exclusively for deciding whether or not Bell would be penalized for riding the outside wall, a penalty option that became available after Ross Chastain’s ‘Hail Melon’ in the Fall of 2022.

So, what exactly happened that has everybody so suspect of the three non-playoff drivers?

In the closing stages of Sunday’s event, William Byron was fading, as his No. 24 Liberty University Chevrolet had damage from an earlier incident with Blaney and Shane Van Gisbergen that knocked the toe out slightly and killed any long-run speed.

With 15 laps to go, Byron dropped to sixth. With Bell in 18th and not on the lead-lap, the gap had shrunk to just a single point between them. Austin Dillon and Ross Chastain were sitting in seventh and eighth when that pass was made, and parked their Chevrolet Camaro entries behind the No. 24, running double-wide to impede any progress.  

Byron ended up finishing sixth, with Dillon and Chastain trailing him. Though, it was clear the No. 24 was holding the pack up, as Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Noah Gragson, Shane Van Gisbergen, and Alex Bowman had all closed up right to the rear-end of the battle.

In that same timeframe, there were nearly five minutes of “abnormal radio communication” that occurred between Austin Dillon, crew chief Justin Alexander, and spotter Brandon Benesch, where the three parties can be heard discussing the status of the No. 24s post-season run, as well as “the plan”, asking if Ross Chastain and crew chief Phil Surgen were aware of said plan.

“If we pass him, he’ll be out,” a crew member on the No. 3 Chevrolet says over the radio in the closing laps of the run. At that point, Dillon comes back and asks his crew who Byron is racing. “Keep me posted on this deal Justin [Alexander], if it changes,” another crew member, presumed to be the spotter, says.

As far as the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet, the radio communications between Ross Chastain, crew chief Phil Surgen, and spotter Brandon McReynolds don’t indicate any foul play. The only real suspicion of the team comes as they get implicated by the communications of the No. 3 team, when asking if they [Chastain and Surgen] know of the plan.

With a watchful eye being kept on Byron and the Talladega-sized pack chasing him down, on the other end of the racetrack, Bubba Wallace was struggling with his No. 23 XFINITY Toyota Camry XSE, from 18th-place, the first car one lap down and just one spot ahead of Christopher Bell.

The radio communications between Wallace, crew chief Bootie Barker, and spotter Freddie Kraft aren’t anywhere as egregious as the Richard Childress Racing team, but what happens in the final laps of the event are likely open for some interpretation.

Wallace can be heard on the radio saying, “God forbid if we won’t help a f**king [Joe Gibbs Racing] car,” but the driver of the No. 23 is just behind Martin Truex, Jr., and a couple of laps later is passed by his team owner Denny Hamlin.

Despite his crew telling him to “fight the 24 [Byron] with all you got” as he approaches behind him. At this point in the race, Wallace is still one spot ahead of Bell, and the gap between the No. 24 and No. 20 team is just a single point.

With three laps remaining, Wallace keys the radio and says, “I think I’ve got a tire going down”. At that point, the on-board camera shows the No. 23 being very wobbly in the corners, like there is indeed a tire going down, while running in the second, or at times, third lane.

The 23XI Racing driver’s pace is slowing down significantly over the last three laps of the race, dropping a second or more off the pace that he was setting just moments earlier. Wallace continues to lose time, and on the final lap, gets passed by the giant swarm of race cars, which includes Christopher Bell.

On the final lap of the race, Wallace is letting the pack of cars pass on the inside when the Joe Gibbs Racing driver lunged into Turn 3, contacting the side of the No. 23 Toyota Camry XSE, sending both cars up the racetrack, and Bell into the outside wall – where he decides to stomp on the gas pedal and ride the wall.

After the fact, the crew asks Wallace if he needs a fire extinguisher to put out a fire – Tyler Reddick, his teammate at 23XI Racing, had a fire under the hood of the racear that ended up taking him out of the race prematurely.

No matter what you make of the actions by those three drivers, they did play an impact on the outcome of the event and championship, which saw Byron hold onto sixth and advance to the Championship 4, after Christopher Bell was assessed a safety penalty for riding the wall.

In the coming days, NASCAR will investigate the radio communications, SMT Data, on-board cameras, and all the information they can get, and decide whether or not the sanctioning body will have to hand down some penalties for race manipulation – penalties which can be hefty.

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Joseph Srigley
JOSEPH SRIGLEY

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