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Richard Stenhouse, the driver's father, was
suspended indefinitely for violations of the NASCAR Member Code
of Conduct. NASCAR also issued an eight-race suspension to JTG
Daugherty Racing team mechanic Clint Myrick and a four-race ban
for tuner Keith Matthews for their roles, however Busch was not
penalized for his actions.
"I think it's fair to say that when you have crew members and
family members that put their hands on our drivers, we're going
to react," NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton
Sawyer said Wednesday morning on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. "There's
not a lot of detail I'm going to get into due to the fact that
these are appealable penalties, and I want to make sure that
we're fair to that process.
"With that being said, and we've been consistent about this,
when crew members and family members get involved, we are going
to react. That's exactly what we did."
Stenhouse and Busch got involved Sunday on the first lap and
then the latter appeared to attempt to deliberately wreck the
former on the second. Stenhouse took issue by parking his
damaged Chevrolet in Busch's pit stall and waiting for the
driver to finish his race.
After a brief discussion, Stenhouse landed a right hook on the
side of Busch's face before other team members got involved.
Stenhouse's father also went after Busch.
"When you wait 198 laps and you make those decisions that were
made, again, we're going to react to that," Sawyer said.
"...Once we get to the point where it gets physical, we want the
two drivers to be able to have time to express their
differences. Once it escalates to a physical altercation, we are
going to react.
"Granted there was no tunnel, granted there was no crossover
bridge (to allow Stenhouse Jr. to leave the track), better
decisions could have been made throughout that period of time
between the incident on the race track and the incident in the
garage post-race."
--Field Level Media [© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All rights
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