NASCAR sends dangerous message with latest penalty that has fans fuming: shut up and drive

NASCAR sent out a loud message with their most recent wrist-slapping this week: Keep quiet, and you can do whatever you want.

Officials handed down their weekly penalties Tuesday after Sunday's contentious race at Texas, and, yes, we did have a driver penalized, fined, and docked points.

It just wasn't the one most fans expected.

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Ryan Preece was docked 25 points and fined $50,000 for his ... incident ... with Ty Gibbs during the race. For those who missed it, Preece was furious with Gibbs during a caution in the middle of the race, unleashing an all-time radio rant aimed at the 23-year-old:

"What a [expletive] idiot that kid is. He is so lucky his car is so [expletive] fast. … All right, when I get to that 54, I’m done with him. [Expletive] idiot."

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A man of his word, Preece did end up wrecking Gibbs.

NASCAR had to penalize Preece after that, right?

Yikes. Not great!

Which brings us to Kyle Busch — who was really ticked off Sunday. First, at Carson Hocevar. Next, at John Hunter Nemechek. Busch appeared to take Nemechek out on the final lap of the race, sending his No. 8 Chevy hard into JHN in Turn 3 and sending him spinning to the wall.

The video went viral, and the two eventually bickered about it on social media later Sunday night. Busch, a two-time Cup champ, was left off Tuesday's penalty report, and NASCAR's Mike Forde later explained why.

"We do look at all available resources, whether that’s the video, in-car audio, SMT data," Forde said on the "Hauler Talk" podcast. "And really what this came down to is … (Preece) said what he said, and then he did what he said."

"And so in our view," according to Forde, "It was intentionally wrecking another vehicle."

Forde later added that Busch didn't say anything on the radio about wrecking Nemechek. That, along with the SMT data that was "inconclusive," according to NASCAR, kept Busch's bank account safe this week.

Naturally, that's a tricky message to send. It's a potentially dangerous one.

The video of Busch's crash went viral because it looked so bad. Clint Bowyer and Kevin Harvick said as much on the broadcast. Fans went nuts on social media. If anyone was going to get docked points and be forced to send NASCAR a big, fat check this week, it was going to be Kyle Busch, right?

Except, he didn't say anything over the radio. Ryan Preece did. And NASCAR is basically saying, as long as you shut up and drive, you can get away with a lot.

Fans were quick to point that out, by the way:

So, where do we stand on this?

NASCAR, to be fair, was put in somewhat of a tough spot here. You had a driver (Preece) go on a Hall of Fame radio rant basically saying he was going to wreck the kid. And then, he did it. I'm not sure how you don't penalize him after that.

But had he just stayed quiet, would he have gotten away with it? Sure seems like it, given Kyle Busch — being the savvy veteran he is — did just that.

I've long said that NASCAR drivers usually do a good job of policing themselves on the track. Lord knows that's how it used to work. New data, readily available from the cars, makes that a bit trickier. What do we think Dale Earnhardt's data would've looked like at Bristol in 1997? Bet Terry Labonte would've loved to see it!

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But it sounds like as long as that data is inconclusive, and as long as you keep quiet on the radio, the series is OK with letting it still play out.

Fair? Foul? Let me know!