NASCAR has finally penalized Zane Smith, handing the Front Row Motorsports driver a $50,000 fine under Sections 4.4a and 10.5.2.5a of the NASCAR Rule Book for slamming into Carson Hocevar on the cooldown lap at Phoenix. Dale Earnhardt Jr. believes the punishment was justified for a much more serious reason than a simple payback for an earlier on-track incident. The veteran insider pointed to the potential dangers of such high-speed contact in today’s Cup cars, citing Alex Bowman’s past injuries to explain why personal grudges cannot excuse it.

“These things do not absorb these types of hits, and you hitting a guy directly in the back of the race car at 130 miles an hour. Now, that likely isn’t going to give a guy a head injury, but the potential is there. You can’t even take that risk. You’ve got to care. You can say you don’t give a s**t what happens to Hocevar. You can feel how you want to feel about Hocevar. You can hate his guts if you’re Zane Smith, but you just shouldn’t do that. And so that’s the only problem I have with it,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on the Dale Jr. Download podcast.

The Phoenix incident began several laps before the finish, when Hocevar and Ross Chastain tangled. Chastain made contact with Hocevar’s No. 77, sending it up the track and into Zane Smith’s No. 38 Ford and Josh Berry’s car.

Smith was told over his radio that Chastain had caused the contact with Hocevar, but he was clearly unhappy with what happened. After the checkered flag, Smith drove into the rear of Hocevar’s car on the cooldown lap, turning a racing incident into a deliberate post-race confrontation.

Earnhardt acknowledged that Hocevar’s driving could frustrate other competitors, but he drew a firm distinction between aggressive racing and a high-speed hit after the event. Smith and Hocevar had already been called to NASCAR’s hauler at Atlanta following an earlier confrontation at Chicagoland, and officials warned them to resolve their differences.

NASCAR vice president of racing communications Mike Forde later explained that the sanctioning body felt its message had been ignored. That history helps explain the $50,000 fine, but Earnhardt’s central concern was the risk Smith’s actions created for another driver.

The warning carries extra weight because of what happened to Alex Bowman in 2022. During a race at Texas Motor Speedway on September 25, Bowman spun and hit the wall rear-first. His No. 48 Chevrolet initially appeared capable of continuing, and he returned to the track after repairs before finishing 29th.

However, concussion-like symptoms emerged in the following days, forcing Hendrick Motorsports to sideline him. Bowman missed five races, including the remainder of the second round and all of the third round of the playoffs, before receiving medical clearance to return at Phoenix in November.

What made Bowman’s experience especially unsettling was how ordinary the crash initially seemed. He later explained that he did not feel great on Monday after the accident, but felt much worse by Wednesday, experiencing eye pain and headaches.

He sought medical attention after realizing the symptoms were not normal. His recovery required work on his ocular and vestibular systems, which help regulate vision and balance, alongside consultations with concussion specialists. The episode showed how a rear impact that does not look catastrophic from the outside can still leave a driver dealing with a serious injury.

The Next Gen car’s safety history makes Earnhardt’s concern more than hypothetical. In its debut 2022 season, rear impacts exposed a weakness in how the car absorbed crash energy.

NASCAR’s safety engineers found less space at the rear of the chassis to deform and dissipate energy than in the previous generation, partly because the design had to protect critical components such as the fuel cell. Following injuries to Bowman and Kurt Busch, NASCAR revised the rear and center chassis clips for 2023, adjusting the structure to improve energy absorption.

Those changes were important, but they did not make the cars immune to injury. That is why Earnhardt believes Smith’s actions cannot be excused as payback, even if Hocevar was responsible for the earlier contact. Drivers can be angry, rivalries can be personal, and on-track aggression will always be part of NASCAR.

But deliberately driving into another car at high speed after the race creates a different level of danger. For Earnhardt, the message is simple: a driver does not have to like his rival, but he still has a responsibility not to put that rival’s health at risk.