The Chicagoland race is long over, but the incident between Shane van Gisbergen and Austin Hill continues to be a hot topic. Hill felt the bump by SVG was intentional, whereas the Kiwi said it was accidental.

Ultimately, NASCAR chose not to penalize SVG, as Cup Series Managing Director Brad Moran said that there wasn't enough evidence to prove it was intentional.

Amidst this, Ryan Preece, the RFK driver who has already faced a big penalty this season and is not exactly on the best terms with the sport, was unhappy with it and slammed the governing body over its penalizing standard.

"I don't know where we stand. I really don't. Because, I don't know, you just feel like it depends on who does it and who's going to get the penalty," Preece told Frontstretch during the Atlanta race weekend.

Notably, Preece has all the reasons to be upset, as the Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing driver was penalized by NASCAR following his contact with Ty Gibbs. It was his radio rant that became the deciding factor, as NASCAR felt it showed intent.

"That's where I stand with that right now. And I want to stand with this right now, that I don't think Shane, I don't think, I think, I'm a believer of kind of what Denny said, self-policing. So, I just don't think I should have gotten penalized," Preece further added in the video on X.

On Lap 101 of the Wurth 400 at the Texas Motor Speedway, Preece made contact with Gibbs, sending the latter out of the race. Soon after the hit, Preece showed no remorse on the radio, and as a result, NASCAR issued a behavioral penalty under sections 4.3 and 4.4.A of the rule book.

The Ty Gibbs incident forced Preece to pay $50,000, and a 25-point deduction was carried out. Now, his concern comes as NASCAR did not penalize Shane van Gisbergen after the Trackhouse Racing driver pulled off a similar kind of wreck.

Why did NASCAR choose not to penalize Shane van Gisbergen?

As NASCAR chose not to penalize Shane van Gisbergen for the contact he made, the Cup Series' Managing Director came up with an explanation. Speaking to SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Moran said:

"We looked at it very closely. We pulled everything up on Tuesday like we do. We actually had remote race control starting on that basically right after the incident happened. But we conducted our comprehensive review like we always do.

"We include everything from telemetry to radio communication, all vintage footage, race data, everything we have before we get in the middle of what really happened inside the race car. And there just wasn't enough evidence there to say the incident was intentional."

However, unlike Ryan Preece, Shane van Gisbergen's response was different. On multiple occasions, he stated that he had no intention of wrecking Hill. However, Austin Hill and his team, Richard Childress Racing, believed the wreck was done on purpose.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Sabyasachi Biswas

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason