#hello i could rant forever about NASCAR the sanctioning body/race control being stupid and terrible

[angiepants]

RE: Fining Bubba Wallace

Some of y'all are relative newcomers to NASCAR and reasonably think it's like any other sports league/sanctioning body: the rules are clear, they're enforced fairly, and violations are dealt with fairly. I'm here from the Winston Cup era to tell you that that has never been the case.

These "rules" have always been selectively enforced. They're deliberately vague; race control knows it, the drivers know it, we know it. NASCAR tried to say the Bubba/Bowman incident was different than the Chase/Suarez one because Bowman had to turn the wheel to keep his car straight or some shit? That's the best they could do? Coming up with these arbitrary violations to satisfy a certain segment of the fanbase is one of the reasons a lot of "new fans" from Chicago won't stick around. The rules don't apply to everybody. The dumbest part is there are obvious ways to legislate this clearly and fairly that would still allow for some "boys have at it" shit. Keep it on the track, don't leave pit road to go after someone, if the other guy's car is killed and he can't finish the race you're screwed, whatever. But that'll never happen because NASCAR doesn't want to enforce the rules fairly. They want to have an out for when one of their Special Little Guys does some dumb shit. It's always been like this. It's why Dale Sr. could get away with doing all kinds of wild shit on the track that would -- and did -- get other guys parked. NASCAR was more or less immune to criticism until social media came along. They'd slap a guy with "actions detrimental" and that was the end of it, because they had the NASCAR media in their pocket. Now that people can call them on their bullshit and demand actual explanations, their whole "same but different" schtick is getting harder and harder to defend.