Amid a competitive Martinsville Speedway race on Sunday (Nov. 3), NASCAR found itself with a controversy on its hands, marring what had been a dramatic final elimination race before the NASCAR Cup Series champion is crowned for 2024.
First, Christopher Bell was penalized for riding the wall too long after he got loose and slapped it at the finish, knocking him out of the playoffs and sliding William Byron in. But while NASCAR was reviewing the finish, something else appeared: radio transmissions from a handful of teams to their drivers reminding them of “an agreement,” as well as suggesting that one driver pay back another — a title contender who needed a win to advance — for what was such a non-incident that even the driver didn’t really seem to know what it was about.
All of the radio chatter centered around playoff drivers and seeming orders from their manufacturers to up the odds in favor of certain drivers. The season was in limbo for a time while NASCAR sorted things out.
If you thought that was wild, buckle up.
In 2013, the title was decided by a 10-race title “Chase” that featured 12 championship hopefuls: the top 10 in points plus a pair of “wild cards,” the two winningest drivers in the back half of the top 20 in points based on wins. After the initial points reset, there were no eliminations and no more resets. At the reset, all 12 drivers were set to 2000 points, with three bonus points for each win (the wild cards didn’t get the bonus points), separating the top 12 by 15 points in 2013.
That meant the title was up for grabs among anyone who qualified, and competition for the last spots in the final race of the regular season at Richmond Raceway was fierce with only a couple of spots undecided.
At the time, Michael Waltrip Racing was a team on the rise. Run out of a huge, state-of-the-art facility, MWR had two full-time cars with excellent sponsorship in 2013, along with a third car shared among Michael Waltrip, Mark Martin and Brian Vickers.
Clint Bowyer had already clinched a spot in the Chase by the time the Cup Series rolled into Richmond for the race that would set the field. Martin Truex Jr. was in contention for the second wild-card spot after Kasey Kahne had already clinched the first one.
The wild card wasn’t the only spot being contested. Joey Logano’s tenuous hold on 10th spot could open the door for Jeff Gordon to race his way in, which would have handed Logano the other wild-card spot. Ryan Newman was also in the wild card hunt and could knock Truex out with a win or a five-point advantage at the end.
With just seven laps to go, luck seemed to be swinging Newman’s way. He led the race, and the win would have given him enough for the second wild card no matter what happened to Logano. Gordon had Logano to rights for the final points spot, making Truex the odd man out. He’d need a caution to make anything happen.
He got one.
Bowyer spun in turn 4 on lap 393, bringing out the caution that would change everything.
The leaders pitted for fresh tires, and Truex’s team rallied to give him several spots, while Newman’s final stop was slow. Logano, meanwhile, took a wave-around to put himself one lap down and able to gain positions — and points.
Bowyer would claim a tire going down, despite viewers and competitors saying that the spin didn’t look like a typical flat, noting that it looked like Bowyer had jerked the wheel before losing control.
When the race restarted, a confused Vickers was immediately called to pit road for a reported tire issue; he hadn’t felt anything off with his car. When he ducked into his pit, Truex gained another spot in the race, enough to tie Newman and get the Chase berth on the wild card.
Fans and competitors weren’t the only ones who thought Bowyer’s timely spin didn’t look right. Radio chatter from Bowyer’s team indicated anxiety surrounding Truex’s position and featured a cryptic transmission to Bowyer asking if his arm itched just before the spin. Teams use code all the time to relay information, but the timing here was suspect. It didn’t pass the sniff test, but that alone wasn’t enough to draw a penalty.
Vickers’ unscheduled stop was a whole other story. He wasn’t told to pit by his spotter, who would have been the first to see something amiss, but by MWR President Ty Norris, who mentioned that they needed that point. Vickers’ confusion didn’t seem right either; if something was amiss on the No. 55, he’d have been the first to feel lit.
NASCAR thought that was evidence enough. MWR was slapped with a whopping $300,000 fine, then the largest on record, suspended Norris indefinitely and put all of the team’s crew chiefs on probation. It also docked all three drivers 50 points, including Vickers, who couldn’t even race for Cup Series points as a declared NASCAR Xfinity Series driver, and took 50 owner points from all three cars.
It didn’t stop there. Logano and fellow Ford driver David Gilliland and their teams also drew probation over suspicion that Gilliland had intentionally given Logano a spot he needed to take the 10th points position.
The point fine took Truex out of Chase contention. Bowyer had enough to keep his spot, and Logano was in as well.
Because of the spin drastically altering the outcome of the race by allowing Logano to gain multiple positions, NASCAR added Gordon back into the mix as a 13th driver. The sanctioning body reasoned that without the caution, Gordon would have clinched a spot over Logano.
The driver hurt the most by the penalties was Truex, ironically the only MWR driver who hadn’t done anything but try to run his race. Not only did he fall out of the Chase, but he lost sponsor NAPA after the company decided that MWR wasn’t trustworthy and didn’t want its image tarnished by association.
Truex didn’t stick around either. After NAPA left and no replacement found, his No. 56 team shut down, and he was forced to jump ship after the season to join Furniture Row Racing, where he would win the title in 2017.
MWR never recovered. The team ran the Nos. 15 and 55 full time in 2014 but didn’t make the Chase. Bowyer hung on one more year as the sole full-time MWR competitor, missing the Chase again before leaving and taking sponsor 5-Hour Energy with him.
The once-flourishing organization shuttered its doors before 2016 began.
In MWR’s case, the orders came mainly from Norris, who cost the entire team its existence. Toyota has never been implicated in the race.
Back to 2024, the orders came from Chevrolet and spanned multiple organizations. Only the crew chiefs and spotters involved were penalized, along with fines and the suspension of an executive (Why? Nobody knows.). Suspensions are for one race. All three teams have appealed, and the No. 23 team in particular has a case, because the only information transmitted was the kind of information drivers are given on a weekly basis late in races.
What NASCAR didn’t do this time was penalize Byron. While he benefitted from the chicanery, he and his team didn’t participate in any radio discussions and didn’t do anything to break any rules.
Just like Truex.
Byron will advance to the title race and has as good a chance as anyone to win the title.
While he’s contending, Truex will run his last race as a full-time competitor, with the sting of 2013 and “Spingate” buried behind a title and Hall of Fame career. NASCAR seemed to realize this time that the beneficiary of manipulation didn’t actively manipulate anything.
No matter who ultimately makes the call, race manipulation is an ugly stain on the sport when it happens. MWR’s tale should be a cautionary one — the mighty can fall as easily as they rise.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.