Dale Earnhardt Jr. invokes Clint Bowyer, Spingate in assessing damage to Richard Childress Racing from Austin Dillon ruling

NASCAR announced that Austin Dillon cannot use his win at the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway over the weekend to qualify for the playoffs. The decision comes after Dillon was involved in two wrecks during the final lap of the race.

The incident saw Dillon come up on the rear bumper of Joey Logano. There was contact from Dillon to Logano, which sent Logano spinning into the wall. Dillon then course-corrected back on track and made contact with Denny Hamlin‘s right rear quarter panel, which also sent him into the wall.

According to Dale Earnhardt Jr., the situation and potential fallout reminded him of another controversial moment in NASCAR history — 2013’s spingate, which saw Clint Bowyer allegedly intentionally spin his car out with less than 10 laps to go in the Federated Auto Parts 400.

“I think time will tell whether this is a good decision for NASCAR,” Earnhardt said. “I thought about this for the last several days. I look back to spingate and all of the things that they tried to do to make that right. And while, yes, I believe Clint Bowyer spun out on purpose — and I hate to drag this back up for Clint because he doesn’t deserve it — but all of the things that they tried to do on the front end were probably correct, but there were some other decisions on adding people to the playoffs and trying to make that right that I didn’t believe in.

“You kind of worry whether they’ve gotten this right. For me, it’s all about the integrity of the sport. Does this help the integrity of the sport going forward? … Have we made a choice that that helps people feel confident about our leadership and about tuning in and feeling like they’re going to see a legitimate show the next weekend. And I feel like that this does go in that direction.”

While Earnhardt believes this is an overall “sucky” situation for RCR, he doesn’t believe it hurts the sports or sets it back in any way. RCR has sponsors they need to answer to, along with major monitary deficets during a year. While Earnhardt said the company has received criticism for their cars performances throughout the season; he also argued no one wants to see RCR lose everything.

“So none of us want to see that affect that company in a very bad way or cause them, you know, irreparable harm,” he continued. “But I feel like, you know, NASCAR felt like they had to step in here and make this decision. And, and I think the sport, we’ll move forward in a good direction.”