Chase Elliott highly critical of NASCAR over Ricky Stenhouse Jr. fine for fight with Kyle Busch

Chase Elliott found out for the first time Friday that NASCAR fined Ricky Stenhouse Jr. $75,000 for his role in the fight with Kyle Busch following this past Sunday’s All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway.

He was not happy.

In fact, he was quite critical of NASCAR, calling the sanctioning body out for promoting the fight but then turning around and levying a heavy fine for Stenhouse.

“Wow, that seems like a lot to me… You’re going to fine him, but you’re going to promote with it? What are we doing? That’s a little strange to me. That’s a lot of money to fine a guy. It’s not OK, but we’re gonna blast it all over everything to get more clicks. I don’t really agree with that,” Elliott said, via Toby Christie of Racing America.

If it seems like the $75,000 fine was steep, that’s because it was. Per Seth Eggert of Kickin’ The Tires, it’s the biggest fine NASCAR has ever issued specifically for a fight. Tony Stewart was the previous record holder, having been fined $50,000 for hitting Brian Vickers at Sonoma Raceway in 2004. Busch, meanwhile, did not receive any fine or penalty from NASCAR.

Elton Sawyer addresses fine for Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

During a Wednesday appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio moments after the sanctioning body announced the penalties, NASCAR vice president of competition Elton Sawyer said that “better decisions could have been made” by Stenhouse throughout the night.

“When crew members get involved and family members get involved, we are going to react. And that’s exactly what we did,” Sawyer said. “We looked at all the audio and video from the incident on Sunday night. At this point, that’s all I’m gonna comment on the penalties. … When you wait 198 laps and you make those decisions that were made, again, we’re going to react to that. There could have been different decisions made.

“Once we start to get to the point where it gets physical — we want the two drivers to be able to have their time to express their differences. But again, once it escalates where there’s been a physical altercation there, we’re going to react. Granted there was no tunnel. Granted there was no crossover bridge. But better decisions could have been made through that period of time between the incident that happened on the racetrack and the incident that happened in the garage.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. rips Elton Sawyer explanation of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. fine

Dale Earnhardt Jr. said of Sawyer’s explanation, “that means nothing to me.” Like Elliott, Earnhardt disagreed with NASCAR’s ruling, calling the penalty an “overreaction.”

“[NASCAR] had to say, I get kind of where they’re coming from, ‘The attention that’s getting, we’re not going to say it out in the public but it’s good. But we do need to make sure we send a message that this can’t be the norm,’” Earnhardt said. “And I agree with that. I don’t think we need fighting every week and drivers just going nuts on each other over nothing.

“So, yeah, penalize him, I think he should have been penalized, I just thought it was a little overreacting and overblown because of how sensationalized and overblown it had gotten. Otherwise, I don’t know how to make sense of the amount of money he got fined. But hey, I’m sure there’s some examples where it falls in line with penalties in the past. I’m not sure. But that’s kind of my take on it.”