Several minutes after the Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, NASCAR officials announced that they had assessed a penalty on Christopher Bell for a safety violation after he got loose and hit the wall in a move similar to Ross Chastain’s “Hail Melon” move a few years ago. NASCAR outlawed the move and felt that Bell hit the wall on purpose.
As a result of the penalty, Christopher Bell was denied the final spot in the championship four and it was given to William Byron.
NASCAR has since announced that there will be further investigations into some on track events involving Ross Chastain, Austin Dillon, and Bubba Wallace for race manipulation.
NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer noted that after the race, the incident with Christopher Bell was the immediate focus but they would be looking further into on track events at the end of the Xfinity 500. Sawyer noted, “we’ll look at everything. As I said earlier, we want to go back, as we would have done anyway. We’ll get back, we’ll take all the data, video. We’ll listen to in-car audio. We’ll do all that, as we would any event.” There were reports of “abnormal” radio communications in the three team.
William Byron was in sixth place, just one point above Christopher Bell and the cut line. Christopher Bell was in 19th place, one lap down.
Chastain and Dillon were running side by side behind Byron at the time, blocking the track and making no attempt to pass Byron.
In the meantime, Bubba Wallace appeared to slow down his car so that leader Ryan Blaney would pass, putting Wallace one lap down. Wallace had radioed his crew chief that he thought he had a tire going down. And on the final lap Christopher Bell surged past Wallace and appeared to “ride the wall” to the finish line. The move put Bell in 18th, tying him with William Byron in points with the tiebreaker going to Bell. But then NASCAR determined that Bell committed a safety violation and dropped him to 22nd; giving William Byron the final spot in the championship four.