NASCAR considered removing Chase Briscoe from playoffs but didn’t

NASCAR considered removing Chase Briscoe from the playoffs after Cole Custer’s actions on the last lap of Sunday’s race, but series officials found no evidence to penalize Briscoe.

Instead, NASCAR fined Custer $100,000 and 50 points, indefinitely suspended Custer’s crew chief, Mike Shiplett, and fined him $100,000 and penalized the team 50 owner points. Stewart-Haas Racing said Tuesday it would appeal the penalties. 

Scott Miller, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, said Tuesday that two key factors kept Briscoe in the playoffs:

“Once we looked at the all the points and the final consequences and realized … that it wasn’t going to change who advanced to the Round of 8,” the decision was made to allow Briscoe to remain in the playoffs, Miller said.

“We definitely spent a a lot of time listening to all of (Briscoe’s team radio) audio and there was not a word during the race about teammates or anything from the 14 car radio throughout the race. They were concerned (about the points) and keeping the driver up to speed, how the points were shaking out at different times during the race. … They were in some of the race and they were out some of the race.

“The only chatter (Briscoe’s team) had on the radio was where they were points-wise with the current running order, but nothing that we could even remotely point to as being any kind of scandalous conversation on the radio.

“I can’t say we didn’t talk about (removing Briscoe from the playoffs), but we ruled that possibility out pretty early in the process once we realized (Briscoe) would have been in either way.”

Briscoe was in the final transfer spot via a tiebreaker over Kyle Larson on the final lap while battling Austin Dillon and Erik Jones for position. As they