Past precedent points to penalty for Austin Dillon, but will NASCAR follow through?

If there's ever been a race in the modern era of NASCAR where the sport reverted back to its lawless 1930s roots, this was it.

The finish of Sunday's Cook Out 400 at Richmond looked like a highlight that a couple of friends on a NASCAR video game would post on YouTube, rather than a legitimate finish in what is supposedly the top stock-car racing league in the world.

If you happen to turn on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio tomorrow, expect to hear plenty of fans calling for Austin Dillon to be penalized, suspended or crashed by a competitor next weekend at Michigan.

Penalizing Dillon for a move that will be plastered on all of NASCAR's social media accounts until the end of time would seem preposterous if Dillon was a first-time offender. The problem? He's about as far away from a first-time offender as a driver can get, as both Aric Almirola and Austin Cindric can testify to.

Dillon crashed Almirola on the final lap of the 2018 Daytona 500 and moved Cindric out of the way late in the 2022 Coke Zero Sugar 400 en route to wins in both races, but Sunday night's offenses may be the most egregious of all.

Not only did Dillon send his Chevrolet Camaro deep enough into turn three to spin Logano, but he also proceeded to hook Hamlin into the wall on the front stretch rather than race him door-to-door for the win.

With a Next-Gen car that still has safety concerns as a talking point and a sanctioning body that has suspended two of its biggest stars for intentionally wrecking competitors in the past, Dillon's intentional crashing of Hamlin — and make no mistake, it was intentional — should be scrutinized rather than revered as a case of "doing whatever it takes to win."

NASCAR can't be let off scot-free in this situation, either — after all, it's their playoff system that leads drivers to attempt desperation moves — but at the end of the day, it was Dillon who decided to make such an aggressive move on the final lap.

Disqualification is usually the only method in which NASCAR strips a victory, but as Ryan McCafferty noted earlier, taking away Dillon's win may be the loudest way to announce to every driver in the sport that moves such as Dillon's won't be tolerated going forward.

The ball is in your court, NASCAR. There's no pressure — only the eyes of the entire motorsports world watching to see whether you can further de-legitimize the outcomes of your sport.