NASCAR announces penalties for All-Star Race

NASCAR has officially announced the penalties resulting from the Ricky Stenhouse Jr.-Kyle Busch altercation following last Sunday’s All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was fined $75,000, and his father, Ricky Sr., was suspended indefinitely. JTG Daugherty Racing mechanic Clint Myrick received an eight-race suspension, while tuner Keith Matthews was given a four-race suspension. Kyle Busch did not receive any fines or penalties from NASCAR.

NASCAR vice president of competition, Elton Sawyer, made his first public comments during a Wednesday morning appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, shortly after the penalties were announced.

“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, 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.”

Meanwhile, Kyle Busch opened up about the incident on Wednesday morning via the Kenny Wallace Show, saying:

“You know, to me, it’s just Lap 1. The water is not even hot. The tires aren’t even hot. You’re kind of slipping a little bit, but yeah, I ran wide into Turn 1. Gave an opening to the middle. He took it. I gave room on the exit to make sure we didn’t touch, so I touched the fence a little bit. I was touching the fence, and he still ran into me and brushed off on my left front corner.

“So, it was inevitable that I was going to get put in the fence anyway. I wasn’t too pleased about that, and did come back and retaliate. It showed my displeasure of that. As one guy once said, I meant to rattle his cage; didn’t mean for him to overcorrect and stuff in the fence, but that’s sort of what happens sometimes.