Well…well…well…nothing like a wild finish to get people talking and that’s exactly what the finish to Sunday night’s Richmond race did. When Austin Dillon sent both Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin spinning on the last lap, that sparked a whole lot of very passionate conversation on both sides.
I’m an RCR guy so I’m going to be biased, but unlike most people, I can admit to that bias. Having said that, I can also admit that I see where the anti-Dillon backlash is coming from. To wreck someone on the last lap of the race is obviously going to stir up a hornet’s nest, but to wreck two people is…well, what we’re seeing now.
It’s fine to play Monday Morning Crew Chief and say that your favourite driver wouldn’t have done that. Guess what, though, your favourite would have done that because they have done that.
And, as much as NASCAR fans, drivers, crew chiefs, officials and the gaggle of the Blue Check Mark Bunch want to compare NASCR to WWE every time something they don’t like happens, there is no Ricky Steamboat/Tito Santana/John Cena-type “do no wrong” babyfaces. Every driver has, at one point or another, has done the equivalent of using a foreign object to get a win or a position of a play-off spot.
Every. single. one.
Sometimes it’s the equivalent of a handful of tights; other times it’s an NWO run-in. (To put it in non-wrestling jargon, sometimes it’s a small thing that the officials don’t see; other times it’s a major violation that everyone is talking about.)
And every single time, the respective fanbases for both (or in this case all three) drivers immediately jump into their silos and start firing social media salvos, as if their favourite is completely innocent.
Don’t like my wrestling analogies. Okay, it’s like the elections. You’re going to have people swear up and down that their side is 100% right every single time, the opposition is 100% wrong every single time, and they will call the other side every name in the book if they dare present something that goes against the approved narrative. You can present data that proves Dillon intentionally wrecked Hamlin. You can watch video that shows Hamlin drifted up the track into Dillon.
Doesn’t matter. It’s fake news. It’s a conspiracy theory. Trust the science until the science doesn’t prove your narrative. Sound familiar?
At the end of the day, in NASCAR, as in politics, your opinion on the matter will depend on who you like. If you’re a Hamlin or Logano fan, you’ll scream for Dillon to be penalized, forgetting how many times Hamlin and Logano have wrecked drivers when the situation suited them. If you’re a Dillon fan, the fact that this is the second time he’s wrecked someone to score an important win won’t be part of the dialogue.
Every driver has wrecked someone. Every driver will justify their actions. Every fan base will be okay with it when it suits them, and demand punishment when it doesn’t.
And as Buffalo Springfield once sang, “Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong.’
johnmilner.ca 