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 Kenseth drew a two-race suspension on Tuesday for purposely wrecking
leader Joey Logano during an Eliminator Round race as part of the
Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Kenseth was trailing by 10 laps and
appeared to be retaliating against Logano, who had turned Kenseth
with five laps remaining at Kansas two weeks earlier when they were
battling for the lead.
Kenseth lost an appeal before a three-person panel on Thursday
morning in Charlotte, N.C. A second appeal was heard in the
afternoon by NASCAR Chief Appellate Officer Bryan Moss, who also
upheld the penalties.
Development driver Erik Jones will replace Kenseth for this
weekend's race at Texas Motor Speedway and the following weekend's
race at Phoenix International Raceway.
Kenseth expressed disappointed with the results of his appeals and
thought he was being "unfairly made the example" because NASCAR does
not having clear rules on penalties for retaliation.
"I am not going to change who I am, I'm not going to change what I
stand for, I'm not going to change how I race," Kenseth told
reporters. "I've been in this business a long time. I feel I've had
a pretty good career to this point and I feel like I'm going to
continue to have the respect on the racetrack that I feel I
deserve."
Kenseth is eligible to return for the season finale at
Homestead-Miami Speedway the weekend of Nov. 20-22.
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After NASCAR initially issued the two-race suspension for on-track
retaliation, Joe Gibbs Racing announced it would appeal Kenseth's
penalty as being too harsh and inconsistent with past penalties for
retaliation.
"We issue penalties for two reasons: We've got to punish you for
what we think you've done wrong, and we have to make sure that we
deter somebody else from doing exactly what you did or worse,"
NASCAR chairman Brian France said Wednesday on SiriusXM Radio's
NASCAR channel. "That's why we can't be consistent with every single
penalty because sometimes we've got to up the ante with a penalty
because we don't believe the current remedy is a deterrent. That's
one of the reasons that we arrived at a two-race suspension in this
particular case."
The two-step NASCAR appeal process was expedited to have a decision
before the race this weekend.
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