Corey Day entered Gateway fifth in the Chase standings with a valuable championship position to protect. By the time the race ended, however, a confrontation with William Sawalich had left him 33rd, eighth in the standings, and 69 points behind the lead with only seven races remaining.
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Sawalich, who was not part of the Chase, also saw his race unravel, but his 16th-place finish carried no such major consequences. The incident has now prompted Dale Earnhardt Jr. to make a larger point about how Chase drivers should race non-contenders.
“We’re not going to treat these Chase guys differently and punish the non-Chase guys. They’re already punished. They didn’t make the Chase, right? And they’re mad about it, and they’re frustrated that their season didn’t go the way it should go. I would probably give the non-Chase guy a little more room. He’s not to be f***** with. Non-Chase guys don’t want to be treated as second class. They’re probably the guys not to be messed with as opposed to, like, Chase guys, they got s*** to lose,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on the Dale Jr Download podcast.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was speaking in the aftermath of the William Sawalich-Corey Day confrontation at Gateway in the O’Reilly Series, where the two young drivers once again found themselves at the center of a heated battle. Day was running near the front when contact with Sawalich escalated late in the race, eventually ending the Chase contender’s night.
With less than 50 laps remaining, Day was battling Sawalich when his HMS Chevrolet moved up into the JGR Toyota. The contact appeared to leave Sawalich unhappy, and the situation quickly turned. Sawalich then made a sharp move across the track and made heavy door contact with Day.
The impact sent Day spinning off Justin Allgaier’s nose and into the inside wall. As a result, Day’s race was over, and the damage went far beyond the sheet metal as he dropped to eighth in the standings. Sawalich, too, finished 16th, though he looked poised for a top-ten finish. But Sawalich was not part of the Chase. So, losing those positions did not create the same championship setback Day faced.
Dale Jr. didn’t agree with the sentiment of the fans suggesting NASCAR should penalize Sawalich, as he spoiled the race of Chase contender. Denny Hamlin had a similar view over this situation and asked NASCAR should allow drivers to settle this issue. And the sanctioning body hasn’t announced any penalties for the JGR driver.
Once the regular season ends, the field is divided between drivers chasing the championship and those who did not make the Chase. Yet there is no physical separation between them on the racetrack. Every race till the end of the season, they line up together, fight for the same track positions, and still have every opportunity to win races.
For Dale Jr., that means a Chase driver cannot expect a non-Chase competitor to suddenly become more conservative. Those drivers may have lost their championship opportunity, but they have not stopped being NASCAR drivers. They still have their own personal goals, whether that means winning a race, improving their season position, or settling a score with another driver from an earlier incident.
A similar dynamic has already emerged at the Cup level between Brad Keselowski and Carson Hocevar too. At Darlington, Hocevar’s No. 77 made contact with the No. 6 RFK Ford, spinning Brad Keselowski in the process. To add to the tension, immediately after the race, a smiling Hocevar brushed off the incident with the remark, “He spun.” He refused to take accountability for his actions.
Their Darlington confrontation eventually left Keselowski, a non-Chase driver, frustrated with Hocevar, a championship contender with several races left for the season to end. Keselowski has since made it clear that “his [Hocevar’s] day’s coming, and it’s coming hard. Watch out, Carson.”
That parallel reinforces Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s broader point. Chase drivers have more to lose because every damaged car and lost position can affect their championship campaign. Non-Chase drivers do not have that same pressure, which can make their approach different even though they remain bound by the same racing rules.