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NASCAR official says intention would be ‘not to react’ in Kyle Busch-Joey Logano incident

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The NASCAR America crew takes a closer look at the comments made by NASCAR's Brian France and Steve O'Donnell and discuss what to expect from Joey Logano and Kyle Busch in future races.

NASCAR plans to meet with Kyle Busch and Joey Logano to discuss their last-lap contact and altercation on pit road Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but a series official said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that “our intention would be not to react’’ unless new evidence emerges.

Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief racing development officer, addressed the Busch-Logano incident Monday on “The Morning Drive,’’ saying that it remained under review.

“We’ve always said that we’ve got to take everything and make sure we look at all the video,’’ O’Donnell told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “I would say from our initial assessment last night in looking at what happened, as far as on track, I don’t think we saw anything that was intentional by any means. We’ll continue to review that. We’ve got to have discussions with both drivers. We talked to some folks postrace as well.

“I think our intention would be not to react unless we see something that we haven’t seen yet and something that comes up from those discussions. We’ll certainly bring both drivers together before we go on track in Phoenix and again have some dialogue. Still under review. It’s an emotional sport, and I think it shows exactly how much every position means on the track. These weren’t two guys going for the win, obviously going for top 10s, but it shows how important it is in the sport.’’

Asked if new series sponsor Monster Energy, which is known for its edginess, might impact NASCAR’s decision on the matter, O’Donnell said:

“No. We love our sponsor for sure, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to make decisions for our sport. We’ll continue to do that. Again, we want to look at everything and see that we’re not missing anything from video, obviously. There’s a lot of video out there. More importantly, want to talk to the drivers involved and see where we go from there. Would like to just leave it at we’re going to talk to them and see where we end up prior to Phoenix.’’

O’Donnell also was asked about the involvement in crew members in the altercation on pit road.

“What our position has been, we want to leave it in the drivers hands,’’ O’Donnell said. “What we don’t want to see, and the drivers have asked for this, which is very fair, is a crew member initially approaching a driver or initiating some type of altercation with a driver.

“Just early review of this (incident). This was two drivers with crew members kind of stepping back, and once something happens, a crew is taught, which I think is right, that if someone comes up in your pit box and attacks your guy, you have the right to try to break that up or bring it to a stop. That was the initial review that we saw from the crewmembers. Again, there is still other video out there that we’ve got to look at. When we talked postrace to the race team that kind of confirmed what we had seen.’’

O’Donnell also was asked that if NASCAR issued penalties and the sport used the incident to promote it, if it would be sending a mixed message.

“I think that’s fair,’’ O’Donnell said. “You’ve got to toe the line that if you’re going to dole out penalties, you better not be using that to promote the sport. I think we recognize that and that’s not something we would do if we did hand out penalties, but I want to stress that our initial indication is really to just have dialogue with both of those drivers and see where we are and try to avoid that if we can.’’

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