Chase Briscoe may be focused on chasing his first NASCAR Cup Series championship, but that hasn't kept him from noticing that NASCAR has a serious retaliation problem.
Most recently, of course, we had the incident between Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson at Las Vegas. Wallace received a one-race suspension for intentionally wrecking Larson and shoving him on the infield grass; a suspension that Kyle Petty (among others) argued wasn't severe enough. While Briscoe didn't offer any specific hot takes on Wallace's suspension, he did talk with reporters ahead of this weekend's race Homestead-Miami Speedway about NASCAR needing to do more to crack down on vigilante drivers seeking dangerous revenge out on the racetrack.
"I don't think I've ever wrecked anybody on purpose so I don't think I have to worry about the repercussions of it, but I definitely think that the penalties need to be severe," Briscoe said.
"We've seen, I feel like over the last couple years, it kind of got out of hand a little bit just because I think guys have felt comfortable to do certain things and know they're probably not going to be major repercussions."
"I think they're trying to get the ball back in their court to where they have a little more control probably. Which I think is probably needed because it has gotten out of hand. Look at how we race at the end of these road course races, there's just no respect a lot of times, things like that."
Briscoe (coming off his own controversy, after his teammate Cole Custer was fined and penalized for intentionally slowing down other drivers at Charlotte to allow Briscoe to advance to the Round of 8) echoed a recent tweet sent by Kevin Harvick and said that NASCAR will probably be getting way more strict in the future when it comes to punishing drivers for aggressively taking matters into their own hands.
"Every (playoff) is different, but it wouldn't surprise me if they even got more severe at times just trying to get that control back," he said.
"It doesn't really surprise me. It doesn't really change how, I feel like, how I drive. There's some guys that probably are frustrated with it because they may feel they can't take things into their own hands as much. I feel fine about it. I don't feel like it's really going to change anything for me."
