After the incident between Corey LaJoie and Kyle Busch at the Pocono Raceway, The NASCAR community has been eagerly waiting to hear from the official whether a penalty will be implemented or not. While NASCAR addressed the situation, the fans are now split into teams of guilty and innocent on behalf of LaJoie. It’s chaos in the social media courtroom as the judge decides the fate of the matter.

Finally, NASCAR officials came out of the dark, taking to X (formerly Twitter) to announce that they had decided not to punish Corey LaJoie, even though his actions had directly led to the incident that ended Busch’s race early.

In the post they wrote, “Don’t believe it was intentional but we’ll certainly go through and do our due diligence to make sure that is correct” – NASCAR Cup Series MD Brad Moran on Corey/Kyle Busch incident at Pocono.

The crash happened during a restart in the race’s final stages, when LaJoie attempted a move on Busch, prompting the veteran driver to block him. But a miscalculation in the move resulted in contact between the two cars, which sent Busch’s vehicle down onto the apron and collected several other drivers in the process. Upon reviewing the footage with audio and other data to confirm their assessment, NASCAR claimed they didn’t believe the incident was intentional.

Even NASCAR’s Senior Vice President, Elton Sawyer came forth with his statement on the crash and NASCAR’s assessment of the situation. Concluding that after taking a look at all the footage from the race, he’s decided that there was no indication from neither driver nor his crew chief that was this an intentional move from the Spire Motorsports team and the officials have decided to allow the two drivers to race without penalty.

“I’m listening to the in-car audio on the seven…” He says, referring to the audio from Corey LaJoie’s No. 7 Chevrolet. “You don’t hear anything from the driver. There are some comments made by the crew chief in Spire,(…) Just a conversation, you know, just to make he’s in a good place there. But yeah, that one was in race and we will let the guys race.”

However, this has done little to calm the growing anger among fans online, who believe that the sport is failing to hold drivers accountable for their actions, regardless of whether it was on purpose or not.

The fact that Corey LaJoie is not facing any penalties for his role in the massive crash that took out the No. 8 car at the Pocono Raceway has caused outrage amongst the fanbase. Leading to them, calling out the inconsistency in NASCAR’s penalty decisions has been a sore spot for some time now, and this latest incident has only made the issue worse. Now they are sharing their collective frustration towards the governing body that seems unwilling to apply penalties consistently, and they see this as a sign that the sport is turning into a ‘laughing stock.’

Fans Outraged by Lack of Penalties in NASCAR

With Kyle Busch out of the race at Pocono and Corey LaJoie, not facing the repercussions of his actions, fans took to X to show their support for this injustice. Stating that regardless of the reason, not only did Lajoie, but he also took another driver out of contention for nothing! A big part of the blame, according to the fans, goes to NASCAR for their impartial views on penalties lately.

The fan reactions kept coming in. One fan bluntly states, “Bruh, NASCAR officials have become more inconsistent the last few months about the penalties issue topic,” expressing their frustration with the organization’s handling of these situations.

Disappointed in the driver, another fan suggests that LaJoie’s team should consider parting ways with him, as his actions could potentially undermine the efforts of his higher-performing teammates like Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar, arguing that the team needs to hold its drivers to a higher standard. They said, “Hopefully that team will just boot him after this year because if they don’t then he could possibly make Rodney Childers look like a joke and it won’t even be his fault because look at his teammates hocevar is in the top 25 in points and Zane Smith recently has looked better”

Some fans take a more direct approach, stating “when you turn the wheel right, it’s intentional.” They believe that even if the incident was not intentional, the misjudgment level at the highest level of stock car racing was unacceptable and should be penalized.

Echoing this sentiment, another fan points out that “there’s a reason other series penalize drivers for things even if it’s not intentional. This is the highest level of stock car racing there is. A misjudgement of that level is unacceptable.”

The frustration extends to NASCAR’s managing director, Brad Moran, with one fan calling him “inconsistent on calls as usual” and describing the leadership of NASCAR as “a bunch of clowns 🤡 running @NASCAR today.”

Comparisons have been drawn to Bubba Wallace’s recent penalty at the Chicago Street Race, with one fan exclaiming, “Oh, but Bubba gets penalized, this sport is turning into a laughing stock lmfao,” further highlighting the blatant inconsistencies showcased in NASCAR’s penalty decisions.

In the end, the fan’s reactions demonstrate a deep-seated disappointment with the management’s handling of this LaJoie-Busch incident, and the broader issue of inconsistent penalties within the sport has become glaring as they continue to turn a blind eye to it. There is a demand for more accountability and consistency to ensure fair and equitable competition. So will NASCAR heed these warnings or let it cool off before the next race?