Martinsville, being the penultimate race weekend for all three NASCAR series, is home to high-octane drama. However, that also leads to drivers and teams sometimes going overboard. This is what happened in all the races, from the Truck Series race on Friday right up to the Cup Series one on Sunday.

Christian Eckes and Taylor Gray locked horns as Eckes bumped Gray out of the way to take the checkered flag. While Eckes progressed, Gray missed out on his first Championship 4 appearance. However, no one was penalized! The same level of intensity and drama continued into Saturday’s Xfinity race, where Cole Custer and Chandler Smith engaged in a tit-for-tat battle.

Both drivers were fighting for the remaining two spots after AJ Allmendinger and Austin Hill bagged the first two. However, this battle did not remain contained to the track, and hence NASCAR had to step in to penalize the culprits and draw a line between what’s acceptable and what’s not!

Entering the race, Smith was -28 points below the cutline and was desperate for a win. In the final stages of the race, Smith, after being blocked by Custer, loses his cool and bumps the Stewart-Haas driver to move past him as they battle for the third place. However, the defending champion is not one to let that pass easily. The first opportunity Custer got, he too bumped the #81 aggressively, putting both drivers several spots down.

However, in the end, Smith was able to climb back up to third, but that did not prove to be enough for him to progress. On the other hand, Cole Custer, in the 4th position, had enough points to make it to Phoenix. Naturally, the JGR driver was upset after losing out and stomped his way to the SHR driver in the pit lane. As the two aggressively argued, Smith pulled a punch out of nowhere on Custer. This had NASCAR officials jump in to stop it from turning into a wrestling match. Here, take a look:

While NASCAR in such a high-stakes race understands the hard racing on the track, off-track fist fights are not tolerated by the racing organization. Thanks to this, Smith has been fined $10,000. To the #81’s good fortune, it did not amount to a race suspension. However, Smith was planning to do a lot more than one punch; as he said post the scuffle, “I was planning to do a lot more than that to be completely frank with you, I was extremely (expletive) off.” 

Further in the conversation, Smith explained what unfolded in the track. He said, “I gave him five laps before that before that caution came out, beat his bumper off and never shipped him or anything like that. Then finally it’s like alright, the laps are winding down. I’m in a must-win, the 20’s starting to drive away. He was really good all day. I can’t waste any more time with him. So, I finally had a good enough run and pushed him up the race track, and went on our way. But I gave him a chance for five laps before that, right?”

However, according to Custer, he responded to hard racing with hard racing, which is generally the norm. Explaining his side of the story, the SHR driver said, “I mean, it is what it is. I think at the end of the day, you know, he put us in the wall a few times this year. He kept us from winning a race I feel like at Kansas, and he used the bumper on me, I used the bumper on him. I don’t know how we’re not even. Then he punches me in the face. I can’t even tell if he really punched me in the face it was so soft. But at the end of the day, we’ll go on to Phoenix.”

But in the end, this is part of NASCAR and should have been left on the track. Dragging it to the pit lanes is what took it too far. Recently, NASCAR veteran Denny Hamlin shared his opinion on the incident.

Denny Hamlin backs Chandler Smith

NASCAR, in their penalty spree, also gave their verdict on the Cup Series race manipulation incident. The Cup race was no exception to hard racing. With 24 laps to go to the Martinsville race winner, Ryan Blaney bumped and shoved Kyle Larson to pass him. This is followed by Larson bumping Blaney back. Such tussles are evident and very much part of NASCAR.

On the recent Actions Detrimental podcast episode, Denny Hamlin provided his view on the Custer-Smith incident. He said, “It’s the same thing [Ryan] Blaney did to anybody that was in his way this past weekend. We’re celebrating Blaney, so I guess we should probably celebrate Chandler’s move there.”

The #11 trying his best to be liberal on the matter also spoke about what warranted Custer’s retaliation. With two spots already booked and Justin Allgaier with a higher points deficit than Custer, it led to the SHR driver taking no chances.

Had Chandler Smith won the race, the #00 driver would have been out. Hamlin on this said, “You can look at it (Custer shoving Smith) as though that’s good defense because if Chandler wins, Cole’s out. So that’s good defense, but it certainly is a tough scenario because Chandler had to win, Cole’s trying to protect his spot in the final four.”  

What did you think about the Custer-Smith incident?