The incident between Shane van Gisbergen and Austin Hill at the eero 400 was one of the major talking points from last week's race at Chicagoland. While Hill feels it was intentional, SVG maintained his stance that it was accidental.

However, NASCAR chose not to complicate things and didn't issue any penalty to SVG. Brad Moran, the managing director of the NASCAR Cup Series, recently spoke on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio and revealed why the governing body chose not to penalize Van Gisbergen.

"We looked at it very closely," Moran said. "We pulled everything up on Tuesday like we do. We actually had remote race control starting on that basically right after the incident happened...There just wasn't enough evidence there to say the incident was intentional."

Moran also explained on SiriusXM how the penalty was different than the one Ryan Preece was charged earlier this season for his incident with Ty Gibbs.

"Probably looked very similar, but obviously when we did our review of that (Preece's) incident, we had data that felt it was intentional. We had different radio communication that led us down in that direction."

But in SVG's case, there was no radio communication of that sort, and there was no evidence for a penalty. The entire point Moran tried to make was that while they rely on these factors, they also do not want to go overboard with their judgement.

"We try not to get in the middle; we don't wanna over-officiate. We like aggressive driving, we like good hard racing, that's how we sell our stadiums out."

Notably, on Lap 48 of the eero 400, Shane van Gisbergen and Austin Hill were battling for 28th position. As they battled each other out, they made heavy contact while exiting Turn 3 and entering Turn 4.

SVG's 77 car hit the rear bumper of Hill's No. 33 car, sending him against the wall, jeopardizing his race. The Trackhouse Racing driver, however, went on to finish 25th.

NASCAR boss confirmed stance on Shane van Gisbergen

NASCAR's Senior Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer, revealed that the governing body did not opt to penalize Shane van Gisbergen as the emotions on the Trackhouse Racing driver ran high. If he were in his place years ago, 'he would have done the same.'

"No penalty there; definitely is emotion, I would’ve done the same thing 30 years ago when I was a driver.’ We are letting that one go as well," Sawyer said, as quoted by on3.com.

However, the stance from Austin Hill and his team owner, Richard Childress, was different. Soon after the wreck, Childress took to the radio and said it was "blatant" and was a "payback from California."

Hill also expressed immense frustration at the incidents and declared it to be deliberate. With that said, the contact at Chicagoland was another chapter in Austin Hill and Shane van Gisbergen's multi-week feud that started at San Diego, then went to Pocono and continued at Chicagoland.

You can read more on the Daytona Racing Digest!

Written by

Sabyasachi Biswas

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason