Manipulation and Broken Rules Become the Talking Point of Martinsville

Death, taxes, and NASCAR being put into a tricky situation because of the rules they have implemented and allowed. These are the three guarantees of life and we saw the last one play out for the elimination race at Martinsville Speedway.

After what was nothing short of the best race at the speedway in the six years I've been watching, Ryan Blaney celebrated a win that locked him into the championship race at Phoenix next week. Meanwhile, William Byron and Christopher Bell were left to sit on an eerie pit road to see who was the final one to make the Championship Four.

About halfway through the race, Blaney had made contact with Shane Van Gisbergen while racing past Byron which caused Van Gisbergen to slide up into the 24, giving him unfortunate damage to the oh-so-fragile toe link. This combined with tires that were about 30 laps older led to Byron fading in the closing laps of the race. 

Byron was riding in third place, sitting a slightly comfortable four points above Bell as Bell was stuck a lap down and had seemingly no chance of being able to pass another car on track without the help of a caution. However a hard charging Blaney easily worked his way around Byron causing the gap to lessen to three points. Not too many laps later Austin Cindric made short work of Byron, now the gap was down to two points and tensions were high. They got even higher when Denny Hamlin found his way past the 24, creating just a 1 point difference between Byron and Bell.

Luckily for Byron, it was a brigade of bowties behind him. It's impossible to deny that manufacturer orders are a pressing issue in NASCAR, and have been for the better part of the last five years, but it was even harder to deny their involvement in this finish. Despite being pretty clearly faster, the Chevrolets of Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon rode behind Byron in a two wide formation that made it impossible for any driver to get around them on such a tight track like Martinsville. This formation made it so Byron didn't lose any more spots and kept his point to Bell.

That was however until the final turn when, to the surprise of many, Bell was scored as a tie with Byron in the points standings to which Bell was the winner of said tie due to his second place finish at Las Vegas earlier in the round. After viewing the replays, it turns out Bubba Wallace, a fellow Toyota driver who was in the position ahead of Bell, claimed to have a tire going down after being told about the points situation. This culminated when he appeared to have very little control and speed within his car which allowed Bell to divebomb him into Turn 3. In the midst of this divebomb, Bell made contact with the wall about halfway through the corner. Rather than slowing down to cut back down the track, Bell accelerated whilst against the wall for the rest of the corner.

Reminder that, after Chastain's famous "Hail Melon" move where he rode the Turns 3-4 wall to pass Denny Hamlin to advance to the championship race, wall riding was henceforth banned due to the safety issues it presents. 

This takes us back to the eerie silence on pit road while race officials deliberated on the outcome of this finish. 

On one hand, there was clear and deliberate race manipulation by the Chevy camp to not pass Byron and give him the best chance of advancing. On the other hand, there was possible manipulation by the 23 team to slow down and allow Bell to pass in which during the pass Bell had rode the wall for half the corner, a move that borders the idea that NASCAR had outlawed.

The ruling by NASCAR was only against Bell, deeming him to have broken the rule about wall riding, dropping him four positions and allowing Byron to advance.

There has been much debate about how the penalties work out and here's my take on it. We have a very recent race manipulation case within the playoffs we can base precident around. This was in 2022 at the Charlotte Roval when Cole Custer purposely slowed down to hold up another car and allow his teammate, Chase Briscoe, to pass him and gain enough points to advance to the next round. In this case it was ONLY Custer and his team that received a penalty. There was NOTHING done against the 14 team, the benefactor of the situation.

If we apply this to the case that we're looking at now, that means even if NASCAR deems there was blatant race manipulation, it would have no affect on the 20 or 24 teams. Instead, the 1, 3, and/or the 23 team would be looking at points penalties, crew member suspensions, and fines. So whether you want to say there was race manipulation, there undoubtedly was from the Chevrolet side meanwhile Wallace convincingly looked like he a genuine problem with his car, it's all a moot point in terms of who advances to the next round.

Now what matters is whether Bell actually did break the safety rule about riding around the wall. While his incident looks and is significantly different from what Chastain did back in 2022, there is enough that is similar, in my opinion.

"We sat in a meeting two years ago at Phoenix about that move and whether it should be done again," Byron said. "We came up with that because of the safety of the crossover gate there." (Credit to Bob Pockrass for the interview where Byron stated this). Going off of what Byron said, there were concerns about the gate in Turn 4 possibly popping open due to someone riding the wall and ripping the car in half, likely causing serious harm to the driver of who falls victim to that.

Well, if you look at the replay, Bell hits the wall in the middle of the turn and seems to (SMT data hasn't been made public yet) full throttle his car against the wall and this safety gate. That seems like an very clear and apparent violation of the rule, regardless of what Bell says his intentions are. Rules are in place for a reason and violators of said rules must be punished, no matter if it was intended or not.

Although I am personally a Byron fan, I believe I have analyzed this full scenario with no bias. The manipulation has precedent of not penalizing the benefactor and Bell had dipped his toes too deep into the laws of NASCAR and ended up violating them. It's unfortunate that something like this decides a driver and entire race teams entire season, but this is the name of the game that NASCAR created and like it or not, this is the drama many new fans love to sink their teeth into.