NASCAR needs consistency to take precedence on penalty decisions

After finishing 32nd in Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Chicagoland Speedway, Ryan Preece was dealt another gut punch Tuesday when NASCAR did not penalize Shane van Gisbergen for spinning Austin Hill or Zane Smith for spinning Carson Hocevar in Sunday's eero 400. 

Preece was penalized 25 points after spinning Ty Gibbs in the May 3 race at Texas, a move NASCAR deemed intentional largely due to Preece's radio communication with his team. 

There was no such radio communication from either van Gisbergen or Smith at Chicagoland that warranted a penalty in NASCAR's eyes, however. Hill may have been the most guilty culprit in that regard, as his team expressed its frustration before telling Hill to wait before saying anything potential incriminating. Hill doored van Gisbergen under caution to show his displeasure. 

NASCAR has long tried to toe the line between its "boys have at it" policy and a more stringent course of action in regard to competitors intentionally wrecking each other. Of course, the word "tried" is doing the heavy lifting. It's been more akin to a complete lack of consistency than toeing the line. 

At Martinsville in 2015, Matt Kenseth wrecked Joey Logano in a crucial Chase race weeks after Logano had spun Kenseth at Kansas. Kenseth played things cool, saying he had a tire go down. He was suspended for two races. 

Denny Hamlin was docked 25 points in March 2023 after admitting to intentionally hitting Ross Chastain, with whom he'd had a year-long feud, at Phoenix. It proved to be Hamlin's admittance of his intent on his podcast that was the deciding factor in the penalty. 

In the same Texas race that Preece incurred his penalty, Kyle Busch made contact with John Hunter Nemechek in what appeared to be retaliation for a move Nemechek made just seconds earlier. NASCAR did not penalize Busch. 

Time for NASCAR to set, stick to precedent

NASCAR has a point that, without radio communication explicitly stating the intent of van Gisbergen and Smith, there's no definitive answer as to whether or not they intentionally wrecked Hill and Hocevar on Sunday. 

But deductive reasoning would at least suggest that there's a 50 percent chance. Hill and van Gisbergen have a checkered past, tangling with each other at San Diego and Pocono in June. The eye test makes Smith's contact with Hocevar look more intentional than van Gisbergen's dive-bombing of turn 3 on Hill, even if Smith did wreck himself in the process. 

At some point, consistency has to come into play with how NASCAR decides penalties. With large sums of points and even suspensions in the most drastic cases on the line, defining intent has to involve looking more in-depth at the on-track accident, not just listening to radios. If staying silent after a intentionally wrecking a competitor is the easy way out of being penalized, that precedent is now set. Future decisions to the contrary will only be further scrutinized. 

NASCAR fans don't mind the "boys have it" approach of drivers self-policing themselves. They don't mind a stricter approach either, which would likely be better for safety reasons and for the purposes of making the sport look more polished. 

But it's time for NASCAR to commit to a precedent and a standard and stick to it when it comes to how it penalizes drivers. If he could, Preece would likely take his case to the Supreme Court. Consistency when it comes to such a big decision is not only good PR, but an imperative for the pinnacle of stock car racing.