Its been a heated back and forth recently between William Sawalich and Corey Day in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Numerous run-ins between the two resulted in a heated conversation on pit road at Darlington Raceway.
But it wasn’t over there. This past weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway (Sept. 12), Day got loose underneath Sawalich and with their history, Sawalich doored him back down the straightaway, resulting in the Hendrick Motorsports rookie crashing into the inside wall.
Jeff Gluck of The Athletic reported that NASCAR would take no further action in this kerfuffle. Did they get it right? Amy Henderson and Stephen Stumpf debate that on this week’s 2-Headed Monster.
NASCAR’s Non-Action Condones Blatant Disrespect and Danger
NASCAR dropped the ball at a moment it could’ve scored a credibility touchdown.
If you haven’t seen the incident between William Sawalich and Corey Day from Saturday’s NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at World Wide Technology Raceway, here it is:
Frustrated with contact from Day on the prior lap, when the two raced tightly, Sawalich clearly takes a hard left into the side of Day’s car. The result was Day taking a hard hit against the inside wall, damage to Sawalich’s machine, and point leader Justin Allgaier suffering damage that ultimately cost him a chance to contend and the lead he held going into the race.
And NASCAR shrugged its shoulders and said, “OK.”
Sawalich was not penalized for a move that was blatantly intentional because NASCAR says it was just “door to door contact.” As if Day didn’t take a brutal hit to the wall. As if it didn’t affect the title race for a driver who was not involved in the beef in the first place. As if … they condone it.
NASCAR cracked down hard on intentional wrecking a couple of years ago, but has since backed off unless it’s a right-rear hook or the offending driver admits publicly that it was not an accident. That’s a huge mistake.
Intentional wrecking is intentional wrecking is intentional wrecking. Is a right-rear hook especially egregious and dangerous? Yep — so the answer is to penalize that more, not to not penalize anything else.
Intentionally causing a racecar to hit a wall, SAFER barrier or not, at upwards of 150 miles per hour is dangerous, unsportsmanlike, and has no place in professional motorsports. The cars may be the safest they have ever been, but that doesn’t mean drivers can’t get hurt. It doesn’t mean there will never be another on-track fatality in NASCAR. The last thing NASCAR needs is drivers upping the odds of a serious injury by willfully causing crashes.
Danger aside, the other big problem with the incident is who else it involved. Think it was just Day and Sawalich? It was not. It was the men and women who put in the sweat equity at the shop and the racetrack for both teams. Sawalich not only damaged Day’s car, he damaged his own, which means his team will be burning the midnight oil to fix it if they plan to race it again this year. He finished 16th with what was a top-10 car they built for him.
And worse still is that it directly impacted the championship race that Sawalich is not in. Not just for Day, who lost three points positions, but for Allgaier and his team who were innocent bystanders. Allgaier was racing Sawalich and Day for position at the time of the wreck , but he didn’t make hard contact until after Sawalich doored Day. (And yes, noncontenders should be able to race contenders for race wins. This was not that.)
NASCAR should have parked Sawalich immediately for the night and been done with it. Not having done that, it should have suspended him from this week’s race at Bristol. Sawalich intentionally wrecked another car. That in itself is enough. That it affected the championship race only puts an exclamation point on it.
It almost looks as if NASCAR encourages creating drama at almost any cost. And it isn’t a good look. No, Day wasn’t hurt. This time. – Amy Henderson
Sawalich Broke None of NASCAR’s Unwritten Rules About Revenge
If you’ve paid attention to the penalties that NASCAR hands out for on-track retaliation in recent years, you will quickly find that, under most circumstances, there are three rules drivers have to follow:
Rule one: Don’t right rear hook someone.
Rule two: Don’t incriminate yourself on the radio or after the race.
Rule three: Don’t wreck someone under caution.
Break any of them, and NASCAR will be listing you in the following week’s penalty report.
Ryan Preece was penalized for his radio comments before spinning Ty Gibbs at Texas Motor Speedway in April. Austin Hill was suspended for right-rearing Aric Almirola at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last season. Austin Cindric was penalized for right-rearing Ty Dillon at Circuit of the Americas last season. Austin Dillon was penalized for right-rearing Denny Hamlin at Richmond Raceway in 2024, and his spotter told Dillon to “wreck him” over the radio. William Byron was penalized for spinning Hamlin under yellow and admitting to it at Texas in 2022. Bubba Wallace and Chase Elliott were suspended for right-rear hooks in 2022 and 2023, respectively. The list goes on.
William Sawalich didn’t do any of those things. He swerved into Corey Day and doored him on the backstretch, and he never admitted it was intentional, even though everyone and their mother knew it was. Want to know another driver this season who walked away scot-free from an intentional-looking accident? Kyle Busch, who spun John Hunter Nemechek in the same Texas race where Preece earned his penalty. Busch didn’t right-rear Nemechek, he didn’t incriminate himself over the radio, and the SMT data was inconclusive to determine if the spin was intentional (not sure the SMT data would say the same for Sawalich, however). Put all that together and Busch didn’t draw a penalty.
Of course, the other point of contention here is that Sawalich is a non-Chase driver who decided to retaliate against a driver competing for a championship. Even then, I don’t believe this warrants a penalty because Sawalich didn’t enter Gateway with the intent to get payback on Day unprovoked, regardless of what happened at Darlington. In fact, Day and Sawalich had raced each other cleanly and side-by-side multiple times throughout the night, and it wasn’t until Day ran Sawalich up the track and roughed him up for the second consecutive week that the payback happened.
If anything Sawalich did was worthy of penalty, it was the fact that it collected an innocent Chase driver in Justin Allgaier who had nothing to do with it. Fortunately for Allgaier, while the incident cost him some spots, it wasn’t a complete day-ender. Had Allgaier been sent to the garage, I would be singing a different tune about the no-penalty decision. Thankfully, that scenario didn’t happen.
Drivers are already limited in how they can self-police. You can’t throw punches like Ricky Stenhouse Jr. did with Busch at North Wilkesboro Speedway in 2024, because while it generates incredible promotional material, it’ll draw a penalty. You can’t signal your intent like Preece did at Texas, because it’ll draw a penalty. You can’t pull anything exceedingly dangerous either, and for a very good reason.
But there needs to be some semblance of self-policing, because it holds everyone accountable and collectively makes the field better drivers. And if a driver can self-police without breaking any of the three rules, just as Sawalich did at Gateway, there shouldn’t be any qualms about it. – Stephen Stumpf
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.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf
A name and email address are required to post a comment. The email address is not publicly visible or shared. Please keep in mind that comments are moderated according to our comment policy.
Comments are listed in order from oldest to newest. Leave a comment