NASCAR won't punish Kyle Busch for sucker-punching Joey Logano


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NASCAR is taking a "hands-off" approach to Kyle Busch's "hands-on" approach to Joey Logano's face. At the end of the Kobalt 400 in Las Vegas, Busch wasn't happy with some final lap contact and handled it by sucker punching Logano in the pits before being roughed up by Logano's crew as he was being escorted away.

Via Autoweek, In an interview on FS1, Logano said that he made a call to Busch to clear the air and tell him that the contact was accidental. While the drivers have maybe buried the hatchet, NASCAR still wanted to review the situation.

After review, NASCAR officials decided that, since the in-race contact was clean, any extra curricular activities should stay between the drivers.

In an interview with NASCAR.com, Steve O'Donnell, NASCAR's Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer said,

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"... as far as on-track I don't think we saw anything that was intentional by any means. We have to have discussions with both drivers. I think our intention would be not to react unless we see something we haven't seen yet." 

He further explained,

"What our position has been is that we want to leave it in the drivers' hands. What we don't want to see [...] is a crew member initially approaching a driver or initiating some type of altercation with a driver."

Basically, there are rules of engagement in pit lane after races are over: As long as it's a driver walking up and tagging another driver without warning and the crew only dispenses beat downs to drivers who attack their guy first, NASCAR says it's all good. We get the feeling that NASCAR kind of likes the drama and attention that a driver brawl brings to the sport and won't do too much to discourage the practice. Now if there is any sort of on-track revenge later in the season, you can bet NASCAR officials will have something to say about that.

Related: NASCAR comes down hard on Joe Gibbs racing for violations in race winning car  

 

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