NASCAR chairman Brian France calls meeting with Matt Kenseth

Despite many fans & drivers saying they believed Kenseth’s move was old-school payback, Petty stated in that sort of occurrence not frequently took place in his era. Kenseth needed the victory to maintain Chase for the Sprint Cup eligibility and was eliminated from NASCAR’s playoffs the following week at Talladega Superspeedway.

“I felt like I was nearly encouraged”, Kenseth told the AP.

Even after the Martinsville takeout, Logano looked like a threat to win the next week at Kansas but suffered his tire failure and entered Phoenix on Sunday in a must-win scenario. When Kenseth was wrecked by Logano’s teammate at Martinsville three weeks later, he says “the fuse was lit”. NASCAR reacted with the suspension.

Petty won 200 races and seven Cup championships in his NASCAR career. He now is a team owner.

“I have great fans, awesome fans, but then there are a few that just come up, and I start laughing because it’s so creative”, Logano said.

“Everybody was anticipating something to happen, but you didn’t know what it was going to be”, Petty said.

Q. Do you think NASCAR should have stepped in before that got out of hand? “There was no way to get ahead of it”.

Beyond just the act of turning Kenseth, it was also how Logano conducted himself afterward that further frustrated Kenseth and others.

Longshot leads amusing vehicle qualifying: POMONA, Calif. – amusing vehicle championship longshot Tommy Johnson Jr. raced to the qualifying lead in the season-ending Auto Club NHRA Finals. When asked if Hornish would be the driver next year, Petty said, “No, I don’t think so”.

“I took people out, and they took me out”. As soon as the race was over I’d go find whoever it was and we’d have it out right there. “It was deliberate, but it wasn’t that brazen”, Petty said.

“Once again, this is a high-pressure race for these guys and to see us drive to the front and have good pit stops all night, but it just didn’t work out”.