NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer visited the Media Center at Martinsville to clear the air over their decision to remove Christopher Bell from the Championship 4. Bell appeared to ride the wall, which was banned following Ross Chastain's dramatic wall-ride into the Championship 4 during the 2022 season.
Bell didn't only ended up in the wall partway through the corner after sliding up the track and didn't gain any positions from it, but it was still enough for NASCAR to call foul. As a result, William Byron took the final spot in the Championship 4 alongside Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick and Joey Logano.
NASCAR looked at the data and video before deciding that Bell's 'wall-ride' was actually against the rules. Deliberations took about 27 minutes.
Radio comms not yet reviewed
While making this call, NASCAR, did not factor in the questionable radio communication while William Byron's Chevrolet allies Austin Dillon and Ross Chastain raced side-by-side behind him, or anything rapidly slowing Toyota of Bubba Wallace that reportedly had a tire issue.
Sawyer revealed that NASCAR actually hasn't reviewed any of those radio communications and they will do that early next week.
"If you look at the other situations that were going, 23 [Wallace], the cars behind the 24, really no bearing at this time," said Sawyer. "We'll look at those at a later time. When you really just dissect exactly what happened, look at the situation with the 20 getting up against the fence, then riding the fence, which we clearly stated in our statement after Ross did that, that that would not be accepted."
He did not commit to saying that more penalties could be possible, only adding: "We'll look at it."
No appeal allowed
NASCAR will also not allow Joe Gibbs Racing to protest the decision. It is irreversible and not subject to challenge like other penalties are.
"It's a race violation," explained Sawyer. "Race violation, you don't protest them. It's not appealable, I should say. No different than an uncontrolled tire or too many men over the wall or anything like that."
When asked if there would have been more immediate scrutiny on the events surrounding Wallace or the Chevy drivers, Sawyer shied away from speaking on hypotheticals.
"The hypotheticals is really difficult. I don't want to be making statements of things, ifs, ands and buts. I don't want to do that. Like I said, the main focus for us in the tower, when the situation happened, was focusing on the 20 [Bell] car. Let's figure out where are we at there. To me and our team there was focus more on that than the other stuff.
"The other stuff was there, don't get me wrong. The 20 rose to the level that, We got to figure this one out pretty quick."
