NASCAR insiders react to NASCAR penalizing Chase Elliott

Chase Elliott was penalized by NASCAR during Stage 1 of Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for violating the blend line rule coming off pit road.

NASCAR sent a memo to drivers and teams the night before outlining the rule to avoid any confusion on race day, but Elliott still found himself on the wrong end of it. Elliott wasn’t happy and had an outburst over his radio.

Speaking on the penalty on “The Teardown,” Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic both said that Elliott’s outrage was unwarranted, as they felt he clearly violated a rule that didn’t seem to confuse the rest of the field. The only other driver to get dinged for a blend line violation throughout the race was Brad Keselowski.

Chase Elliott falls victim to blend line violation
“I didn’t understand why Chase was as angry — I understand why there’s some confusion, but the vast majority of the field seemed to understand that rule,” Bianchi said. “The only two were penalized, Brad Keselowski and Chase Elliott. And they both kind of said the same thing that they interpreted it the wrong way. But again, if this was so confusing, you would think by nature that more drivers would have violated this.

What Elliott did was pretty egregious. It is very obvious that this should have been a penalty. What’s astounding to me was the reaction from Chase. It was a meltdown that you do not see from him at all. Maybe because it’s the Brickyard, maybe because it’s so hard to pass.

“All these different things that come into it, I was astounded by that. I thought that the Larson thing was close enough that you could let it slide, it didn’t bother me at all. The Chase thing, that seemed much to do about nothing in the sense that that was a clear-cut penalty. There was no debate about this. And I understand there may be some interpretation about what the rules are, but again, 38 of the 39 guys in this race figured it out pretty quickly. So, it wasn’t like everybody was breaking the rule and there’s this mass confusion. I understand you read the rule and you’re a little confused, but again, what Chase did, he took it even further than what is legal.”