NASCAR to meet with Hill and van Gisburgen over Chicagoland clash

NASCAR plans to meet with Shane van Gisbergen (pictured above) and Austin Hill this weekend despite having chosen not to penalize the two drivers for their dustup at Chicagoland Speedway.

Hill was spun by van Gisbergen on lap 48 of Sunday night’s race. It occurred in Turn 3, when Hill, running the bottom lane, was hit by van Gisbergen and sent into the outside wall. The incident severely damaged Hill’s Chevrolet and brought an early end to his race.

The incident looked intentional on van Gisbergen’s part, although he did not mention it over his Trackhouse Racing team radio or in post-race interviews.

“There was nothing definitive that said this was 100% intentional, penalty-worthy; [we] need to put a stop to this,” said Mike Forde, NASCAR vice president of racing communications, on the "Hauler Talk" podcast. “It’s certainly questionable; there are hot heads with these two folks that we want to have a discussion about and make sure that it doesn’t boil over into a significant problem at Atlanta or beyond, and so we plan to have that conversation on Saturday.”

There is history between van Gisbergen and Hill, which dates back to last season in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. The two were also involved in a crash in San Diego when Hill took responsibility for running Connor Zilisch wide on a restart, which triggered a crash that collected van Gisbergen, who was notably upset afterward.

That incident occurred one week after the race at Pocono Raceway in which van Gisbergen washed up in Turn 3, and Hill made it three-wide on the bottom. It put van Gisbergen in the middle, and Josh Berry, who was on the outside, bounced off the wall and collided with van Gisbergen to trigger a crash.

“We have several folks in race control who have held a steering wheel, and when we saw what we saw, it raised the flag of, ‘Hey, that is questionable at best,’” said Forde of the contact at Chicagoland. “So, we started reviewing immediately. We had our friend Scott Miller back at the remote race control … start going through the data on SMT and look at what the throttle traces were on the 97’s previous laps plus the lap in question. The next step, followed up on Monday, same thing. And not only did he look specifically at that area of time, but he went through the SMT data for the entire race for both the 33 and the 97 to see if there were any anomalies throughout the race, and was there something that spurred this earlier on, that maybe this was payback from earlier in the race.

“We went through all the radio transmissions to see if there was anything that raised a red flag and was a smoking gun, if you will. The camera angles. All the available resources, as we always say, and nothing in our eyes proved definitive.”

Hill did get a shot in on van Gisbergen before being forced to retire from Sunday’s race. He ran into the side of van Gisbergen under caution coming off pit road. NASCAR also chose not to issue a penalty on that action.

“We look at that as emotion,” said Forde.

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, talked to Hill on Monday. Both drivers will be brought to the NASCAR hauler at EchoPark Speedway.

However, they won’t be the only ones. NASCAR also reviewed the incident between Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar at Chicagoland Speedway, in which Smith spun Hocevar, and will speak with both drivers this weekend as well.