“Mayhem” is the perfect word to classify all the events that took place down in Martinsville over the weekend. From tempers flaring to teammates locking horns—we saw everything a NASCAR fan would usually expect from a typical fall race at the Paperclip.

While Ryan Blaney showed up when it mattered the most and secured his most recent championship 4 entry with back-to-back wins at the Martinsville cutoff race, the field stirred up some suspicious manufacturer shenanigans. Think ‘race-altering’ moves that held up the pack around fellow Phoenix finalist William Byron. 

His ‘Bowtie’ buddies, Austin Dillon and Ross Chastain, ran a controversial two-car blockade behind the #24 Chevy as the race neared its end, which essentially escorted Byron to a sixth-place finish. In the fallout, all the available in-car radio evidence points to some hefty penalties for Dillon and his #3 team. But even more surprisingly, the grandstands aren’t cutting Ross Chastain any slack for his actions either.

Radio Chatter & Ross Chastain’s cautious tactics spark conspiracy claims

NASCAR has a lot to look forward to leaving Martinsville. And that’s not to mention the vast volume of incidents that NASCAR had to look into while they were in Martinsville the last few days. For starters, it took them nearly half an hour after Ryan Blaney took the checkered to conclude that Christopher Bell’s wall ride on the last lap was, in fact, illegal. Bell walked into Virginia 29 points above the cutline, leading all the six playoff drivers, not yet locked in for the final 4 at Phoenix.

And as Blaney charged hard to secure one of the last two remaining spots, the battle for the penultimate one wound down to the Joe Gibbs Racing #20 driver and William Byron with 15 laps to go. Bell was running a lap down in 19th, behind the #23 Toyota of Bubba Wallace, while Byron struggled for speed in sixth after suffering some damage to his toe picked up earlier from battles with Ryan Blaney and Shane van Gisbergen. At this moment, the point difference between Byron and Bell had chipped away to only a single point. Thanks to the top 5 finishes in both stages earlier, the #24 driver was above the elimination line. Bell was -1 below.

As their points fight raged on, a crew member on the #3 Chevrolet of Austin Dillon, who was battling Ross Chastain for seventh place right behind Byron, had noted over the radio, “If we pass [Byron], he’ll be out.” And that wouldn’t be it. Amidst the radio chatter, someone from Dillon’s Chevy team asked if “the #1 crew chief” (Phil Surgen) knew the “deal.” Someone from Dillon’s crew replied to that, saying, “Yeah, he should.” Although no such auditory evidence surfaced against Chastain, Phil Surgen, or even spotter Brandon McReynolds, that brief mention by Dillon’s crew could levy a penalty on the #1 team if found guilty.

Besides, it is almost unbelievable that Ross Chastain, a driver who rarely gives an inch, could not pass the #24 car even once in the last 15 laps. For that matter, the Ford brigade of Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, and Noah Gragson were snapping at Dillon and Chastain’s heels. However, the Chevy duo were on live TV, leaning on each other multiple times, as the #6 of Keselowski even tried to loosen those cars, stopping others from moving up, out of shape, and off the groove. 

Neither of those two drivers made the post-season. Nor were they racing for a win or a provisional spot in the final 4. On the surface, it looked like the pair were solely trying to help Byron make the transfer by not letting other cars pass him. If they did, Christopher Bell, who was inching for those few points over Byron in the closing laps, would’ve caused an upset from an 18th-place finishing position on points difference. For a few moments, the #20 and the #24 were even after the race while NASCAR deliberated who deserved that last ticket to Phoenix.

But after careful consideration, NASCAR issued a safety violation against Bell, who either accidentally, or by intent, pulled off a ‘Hail Melon 2.0’ on the same track where Ross Chastain used the 1.0 version to make the final four transfer, two years ago. After that video game moment, NASCAR banned any drivers from using a move like that in the future. So, they dropped Bell four positions to 22nd in the final race results. And with that, he lost those four crucial points that pushed William Byron into the Phoenix grand finale for his second straight year.

In Bell’s own words after the race, “I understand that the rule was made so you prevent people from riding the wall. But my move was completely different than what Ross’s was. I got loose getting into the corner and slid right into the fence.” Scrambling hard to pass his fellow Toyota teammate, Bubba Wallace, the #20 driver overshot the last corner and got clipped by Wallace’s #23 which sent Bell up the wall. He then rode the wall in a manner very similar to Chastain in 2022. But these are different times, so NASCAR did not think twice too much and penalized Bell.

In the wake of all the contentious updates, Wallace will also be under the microscope since he had informed his team before the brush-up with Bell that he had a “tire going down.” And their contact that led to Bell taking a wall ride was all but a little dicey, to say the least. NASCAR Senior VP of Competition, Elton Sawyer assured fans after the race that the sanctioning body would “look at everything” Sawyer also asserted that, “The situations going on with #23 and the cars behind the #24 really have no bearing at this time,” Hence, he declared they would take a “look at those at a later time.”

However, the #20 team’s frustrations, NASCAR’s reaction to Bubba Wallace, and the collective fan sentiments paint quite the incomplete picture.

Christopher Bell’s crew chief speaks out: “Guess they wanted a Chevy”

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If we’re being honest, things like that have been happening in the Playoff format for as long as one can remember. In 2013, there was ‘Spingate’ involving Michael Waltrip Racing, Furniture Row Motorsports, and Team Penske, which everyone must have thought about after all this talk of a manipulated finish in Martinsville on Sunday. However, the only reason Spingate is so renowned is because so many other incidents in the last two decades have gone overlooked under NASCAR’s scanner and even by the sharpest of eyes in the grandstands.

Racing is not a simple sport by any means. It’s easy to make judgments from across the screen at home. But the massive list of possibilities and probabilities that rear its face every time the green flag waves for the next best NASCAR race is nearly endless. For example, Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon have quite evidently violated NASCAR’s ‘100% Performance Obligation’ rule, which “requires its Competitor(s) to race at 100% of their ability with the goal of achieving their best possible finishing position in the Event.”

At the same time, Bob Pockrass of FOX tweeted that NASCAR ‘tore down Wallace’s car.’ The long-time NASCAR journalist then opined that if inspectors found nothing broken, a “penalty (could be) coming to (the #23) team”. It looks like NASCAR is suspicious about Wallace’s lack of pace in the closing laps but in the same post, Pockrass also wrote that it’s “hard to predict Dillon/Chastain b/c didn’t lose spots (don’t expect anything to Byron).” He informed diehards that “There isn’t a no-blocking rule,” after all.

NASCAR might drop the hammer on Wallace if they find even the slightest infraction. But fans are now calling out the sport’s bias, claiming its quick scrutiny of Wallace contradicts their leniency towards Chevy drivers like Chastain and Dillon. With on-board camera footage from Chastain’s #1 Chevy surfacing online, some fans said, “This entire Chevy orders to not pass Byron is the… Spygate, NBA betting, Astros, BlackSox of racing. With organized wagering allowed on an event, this a race-fixing scandal.” 

Others weren’t so kind and blamed everyone involved for bringing forth the controversial fallout. “These guys are ALL clowns, driver team owner spotter manufacturer, all of them,” wrote one passionate member of the NASCAR community. One eagle-eyed fan noticed that Chastain “had a run to the outside and completely gave up the run.” But in fairness, he had at least half a dozen runs like that in the closing stretch. As this fan elaborated best, “We all know how Ross drives & he ABSOLUTELY could have passed Byron cleanly 100 times in the last 15 laps so that’s not 100% & is RACE MANIPULATION!!”

While a few more opined that there was “Nothing wrong with any of this, nothing!” On the verified side of Twitter, Christopher Bell shared a post where it seemed like the disgruntled Toyota driver had more than a few things to say after his penalty. He tweeted a picture of himself and team owner Joe Gibbs with the caption, “Just a couple of guys missing a bow tie.” And that’s open to everyone’s respective interpretations.

But his crew chief Adam Stevens made his discontent clear when he told Jeff Gluck of The Athletic after the race, “I think that’s a bad look, but bad looks aren’t gonna put me in the Championship 4, apparently. Guess they wanted a Chevy in there. They got one.” Now, Martinsville isn’t new to drama. However, this one turned ugly in a manner even the oldest active track on the NASCAR calendar has never seen before.