Throttle and steering data offers context to last lap of NASCAR Richmond

NASCAR is not naturally inclined to strip wins away for reasons other than post-race technical infractions but the throttle and brake trace data has not been kind to Austin Dillon regarding what happened on the final lap at Richmond.

Dillon conceded that he had every intent to drive into the back of Joey Logano, and the eye test was more than sufficient in recognizing that, but there is this narrative out there that Denny Hamlin wrecked himself on corner exit.

That’s simply and objectively not true.

Okay, so what are we looking at here?

This is Hamlin going lower than his previous lap line in the efforts to avoid the incident between Dillon and Logano. Despite the narrative to the contrary, Hamlin did not fade up into Dillon.

Dillon, for his part, turned his steering wheel left +33.9 degrees to hit Hamlin, compared to his wheel turning right at -3.7 degrees on the previous lap to make his normal corner.

This came after spotter Brandon Benesch told Dillon to ‘wreck him.’

Here’s what that looks like in real time:

So when NASCAR says it will review all video and SMT data to determine whether it warrants some sort of punitive action, this is a snapshot of what senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer is referencing.

“Our sport has been a contact sport for a long time. You always hear, ‘Where’s the line, did someone cross the line?’ I would say the last lap was awful close to the line, we’ll take a look at all of the available resources from audio to video, listen to spotters, we’ll listen to crew chiefs and drivers and if anything rises to a level that we feel like we need to penalize then we’ll do that on Tuesday,” Sawyer said.

“We’ll look at all of the available resources, look at audio, look at video, look at SMT Data as we normally do in a situation like this and make a determination on Tuesday.”

But stripping the win away is seemingly unlikely.

“Historically that hasn’t been our DNA to take races away but that’s not to say that going forward this wouldn’t start to set a precedent, we’d have to look at it,” Sawyer added.

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