Three of the four spots in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 were awarded fair and square, but a lot of controversy surrounded the battle for the final spot in the 2024 season.
In the final run of the penultimate race of the season, the Round of 8 cutoff race at Martinsville Speedway, Ryan Blaney was cruising to win and advance to the championship race, while William Byron held onto the last Championship 4 position on points.
But in the closing laps, Byron’s car had lost pace thanks to Blaney knocking Shane van Gisbergen into him earlier and knocking the toe out the No. 24 car.
Byron began to drop like a rock until Team Chevy came to the rescue. With Byron having the edge on Christopher Bell by just one point, Austin Dillon and Ross Chastain got side by side behind the No. 24 and blocked the entire Virginia short track. Neither driver attempted to clear the other or get alongside Byron.
Read all of Frontstretch‘s content looking back on 2024 here
Also, by blocking the track, it prevented the much-faster Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano from having an opportunity to get around them or Byron. Carson Hocevar also joined his manufacturer teammates in this Chevy blockade by running on Keselowski’s outside.
The Bowtie drivers making sure Chevy had a car in the Championship 4 was so blatant, it caused many in the media center to openly laugh, which almost never happens. It also caused a social media flurry of complaints about those drivers giving less than 100% in the closing laps.
But just when it seemed the Chevy guys had done enough to get Byron into the championship battle, Bubba Wallace slowed tremendously on the final lap, allowing Toyota teammate Bell to pass him entering turn 3. Upon clearing Wallace, Bell got up into the outside wall, and in a moment of panic, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver got in the gas and rode the wall to the checkered flag.
At the time of the finish, Bell had gained what he needed to and beat out Byron for the final Championship 4 spot.
NASCAR immediately started reviewing what transpired in the final laps without giving any indication as to who would race for the title at Phoenix Raceway. For 27 long minutes, Byron and Bell stood beside their racecars, waiting for a verdict.
Finally, NASCAR penalized Bell for a wall ride, sending him to the tail end of cars one lap down (he was a lap down at the finish). Meanwhile, no one was penalized that day for the manufacturer orders. With Bell losing four spots due to the penalty, that put Byron in the Championship 4.
That wasn’t the end of the scandal though. As the dust from the race settled, people on social media began scanning through the radios of the parties involved in the finish and posting clips that’d seemed to be incriminating.
Wallace, who had claimed his car had a problem, had been informed of Bell’s position. Dillon was heard asking his team if “the [No.] 1” knew the plan, referring to Chastain’s team. In fact, there were several incriminating things said on the No. 3 radio.
Van Gisbergen’s team had been reminded by Chevy that Blaney knocked him out the way earlier in the race. There were so many controversial radio transmissions that it made 2013’s Spingate look like child’s play.
For two long days, the NASCAR world waited impatiently to hear what the sanctioning body would conclude from its investigation into the actions of the final laps. Finally, the verdict was in, and the team’s of Chastain, Dillon and Wallace were hit with penalties. Those three drivers were each docked 50 driver points and $100,000, and their teams were fined 50 owner points and $100,000.
Some thought the drivers should’ve been suspended, but they were not. Instead, the spotters, crew chiefs and team executives were for the season finale. Meanwhile, the teams of Byron, Hocevar and van Gisbergen got off scot-free, while Bell faced no further punishment.
With Byron receiving no penalty, that meant no further changes to the Championship 4. That led to Bell posting on X a picture of himself and owner Joe Gibbs with the caption, “Just a couple of guys with no bowties.”
Just a couple guys missing a bow tie pic.twitter.com/KT44SK4NOO
— Christopher Bell (@CBellRacing) November 4, 2024
Byron not receiving a penalty caused a mixed reaction. On one hand, he didn’t technically do anything wrong, so why should he be penalized? On the other, if his Chevy teammates didn’t block for him, then he would’ve plummeted to the back of the lead lap and out of the playoffs. Martin Truex Jr. didn’t do anything wrong in Spingate, yet he suffered the most of anyone.
Chevy and Toyota also received no fines or penalties, but I’m not sure how NASCAR could even do that. Maybe they should’ve been docked points in the manufacturer standings.
There needs to be a change in the rulebook heading into 2025 that gives NASCAR some type of leg to stand on against the manufacturers. Ultimately, that’s where this whole debacle stemmed from. Dillon’s radio revealed on the pace laps Chevy had concocted a plan to get a Chevy in the Championship 4.
The penalties to the three teams that got caught were stiff, but they won’t be enough to dissuade the manufacturers from ordering their cars to manipulate races in the future. There needs to be some kind of way to penalize the manufacturers enough to actually make them scared to do this kind of thing again, whether its a huge monetary fine, manufacturer points, etc. The Spingate penalties were essentially a death sentence to Michael Waltrip Racing, but it kept teams from manipulating races for several years after that.
But the car makes pour so much money in NASCAR already, that fines could be seen as anything from a slap on the wrist to something so large that it pisses one off and they pull out of the series. So it puts NASCAR in a much more difficult position.
As it stands now, all the Martinsville scandal did was open up Pandora’s box on manufacturer manipulation. It’ll get much worse in the near future before it gets better.
Thankfully, the 2024 Cup champion can’t be traced back to that shameful night in Virginia.
About the author
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020. Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.
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I agree, the penalties weren’t stiff enough to provide a deterrent to future attempts to manipulate the final race that determines the championship.
Chastain, Dillon and Wallace should have, at the very least, been suspended for the 2025 Daytona 500.
Had Nascar not made the Chastain rule,… this wouldnt have been an issue. 🤔🤷🏼♂️🤣