NASCAR penalizes Cole Custer 50 points for block that helped Chase Briscoe at Charlotte Roval

Cole Custer has been penalized 50 points and fined $100,000 by NASCAR for his move on the final lap of Sunday’s race at the Charlotte Roval that ensured his Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Chase Briscoe advanced to the third round of the playoffs.

Briscoe was tied with Kyle Larson for the final spot in the eight-driver third round on the last lap when Custer slowed down abruptly entering the backstretch chicane. His move blocked Erik Jones and Austin Dillon and netted Briscoe two spots to further ensure his advancement into the next round ahead of the 2021 Cup Series champion.

Custer’s crew chief Mike Shiplett has also been suspended indefinitely and fined $100,000. NASCAR said after Sunday’s race that it was going to investigate Custer’s actions and review team communications over the final laps of the race. NASCAR vice president Scott Miller said the sanctioning body found it dubious that Shiplett told Custer to slow down for a flat tire halfway through the final lap when Shiplett couldn't see Custer's car.

Miller also inexplicably said that what Chase Elliott did at Bristol in 2021 wasn't race manipulation worth a penalty since a laps-down Elliott decided to hold up Kevin Harvick and help his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson win the race on his own. That comment by Miller makes it clear that NASCAR has a bigger problem with drivers and their teams blatantly coordinating than they do with actual "race manipulation" as it is defined in the NASCAR rule book.

The penalty is the second one assessed to Stewart-Haas Racing in the last week. NASCAR said Wednesday that Kevin Harvick had been docked 100 points and his No. 4 team fined $100,000 for illegal car modifications to his Talladega car.

NASCAR’s penalty of Custer is larger than the one levied against William Byron for his spin of Denny Hamlin at Texas on Sept. 25. NASCAR race control bizarrely missed Byron’s spin of Hamlin under caution at the time it happened and retroactively penalized him 25 points while Hamlin didn’t get back the points he lost because of the spin.

Hendrick Motorsports appealed Byron’s penalty and got the points deduction removed and Byron’s fine increased. The reinstatement of 25 points helped Byron get through to the next round of the playoffs. Byron's spin of Hamlin came with less than 75 laps to go in the 334-lap race and artificially altered the finishing order since Hamlin finished 10th after he didn't get his spots back following the spin.

And even though the penalty against Custer is larger than the initial penalty against Byron, it’s also a penalty that has little impact or deterrence. Custer drops from 25th to 27th in the points standings because of the penalty. Those two positions in the standings are irrelevant in a world where there are 36 charter teams and the larger share of points money goes to playoff drivers.

By not penalizing Briscoe – and to be clear, NASCAR should not have taken that step – NASCAR is potentially drawing a line that teams would be willing to cross in future races even as it threatened stiffer penalties for a move that would directly impact the playoff field.

NASCAR is clearly still chapped from the Michael Waltrip Racing race manipulation fiasco ahead of the 2013 playoffs as the team blatantly had Clint Bowyer spin late in the regular-season finale in an attempt to get teammate Martin Truex Jr. into the playoffs. But if the only thing deterring a non-playoff driver from helping his playoff driver teammate is a points penalty in 2022, isn’t that a worthy trade? We’re not so sure the threat of a points penalty and a six-figure fine is enough to prevent a non-playoff driver from doing something to help his teammate over the final four races of the season.