NASCAR has a verdict. Ryan Preece's incident with Ty Gibbs has a $50,000 fine and points deducted, while Kyle Busch did not receive any penalty. And Mike Forde has an explanation about why the RFK driver was penalized while Rowdy escaped punishment.

“We try to look at prior instances,” NASCAR’s Mike Forde said, talking about the penalty. “The deliberation on how we wanted to handle this one, was the Denny Hamlin penalty. When he wrecks Ross Chastain at Phoenix a few years ago, and then the next day, talked about it on his podcast, later got the exact same penalty. So, he [Preece] said what he said, and then he did what he said. And so, in our view, it was intentionally wrecking another vehicle. That’s where we landed.”

At the Würth 400, Preece was involved in a contact with Gibbs on Lap 101. Following the JGR driver's moves a few laps earlier, Preece slammed Gibbs into the safer barrier, ending his race. Preece had admitted on the radio earlier in the race that he was clearly angry with Gibbs.

That's why NASCAR fined Ryan Preece under Sections 4.3 and 4.4A of the regulations (Member Code of Conduct Guidelines - Behavioral). Besides the $50,000 fine, NASCAR also deducted 25 points. We've seen NASCAR do something similar in previous instances.

Back in 2023, NASCAR fined Denny Hamlin, too, for a similar incident. At the time, Hamlin had admitted he intentionally wrecked his rival, Chastain.

Interestingly, that raised the question of why Kyle Busch, who tangled with John Hunter Nemechek, didn't receive a penalty.

NASCAR boss explains why NASCAR let Kyle Busch escape

In the final laps of the Texas Motor Speedway Cup Series race, Kyle Busch and John Hunter Nemechek made contact, with Busch seemingly wrecking Nemechek later.

However, Busch denied the move being intentional, posting telemetry data on X. Mike Forde later backed up this statement.

“The data told us that after the incident, he [Busch] was turning the wheel all the way left, just to go straight. So, we had a feeling that he had some pretty significant damage, and it was inconclusive on if that was a damaged vehicle that caused him to get into the 42, or if it was intentional, you know, the SMT data, there was zero things, in our opinion, that said, he did this intentionally, and rose to the level of penalty,” Forde further added.

While racing for 12th place, the two drivers collided on Lap 266 of 267, and were wrecked. In the end, Busch finished the race in 20th place, and Nemechek had to come home in 21st place.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Sabyasachi Biswas

Edited by

Siddharth Shirwadkar