I wish I could have been in NASCAR's executive boardroom when CEO Jim France and other series honchos debated how to handle the fallout from last Sunday's controversial race finish at Richmond Raceway. In case you missed it: On the final turn of the last lap, driver Austin Dillon blatantly crashed two other cars out of contention to net his first win of the season.

The outrage machine immediately hit overdrive. "It's chickensh*&, no doubt about it," fumed Joey Logano, one of the drivers forced into the wall.

NASCAR deliberated for three days before ruling that Dillon's win could stand but wouldn't count toward playoff qualification. It also docked him 25 points, knocking him back in the standings.

Is that really a suitable punishment for endangering fellow drivers? Well, it's complicated. You have to first take into account the broader culture of NASCAR. "Absolutely a line was crossed, but it's an invisible line," noted the usually pugnacious Denny Hamlin, the second driver hit. (Hamlin said that he re-injured a chronically problematic shoulder.)

"Rubbin' is racing" is a long and tired trope that NASCAR embraces. "Our sport has been a contact sport for a long time," commented Elton Sawyer, NASCAR's senior VP of Competition. The unwritten rule is that the drivers police the field. Take a guy out and he or she might do the same to you. That imperfect system holds until a driver with nothing to lose, like Dillon, arrives. Winning a race was his only chance to make the lucrative NASCAR playoffs, and at Richmond he was closer than he'd been all season. Like the founding father Alexandar Hamilton in the play Hamilton, Dillon must have told himself, "I am not throwing away my shot."

NASCAR fans also have a long history of reveling in the rough and tumble aspects of racing. Check out Tom Wolfe's brilliant 1965 profile of Junior Johnson. Or Virginia State Senator James Webb's book Born Fighting, How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, which delves into the unique culture of the southeast, NASCAR's birthplace. (The magazine editor in me marvels at Wolfe's piece. It's the sort of epic undertaking that we strive to present today. If you know of any writers capable of crafting something similar, please name them in the comments. And if you'd like to support our efforts, please join the Hagerty Drivers Club.)

Another complication here is that Dillon was born into NASCAR royalty: He's the grandson of team owner Richard Childress and drives a car with the same number (three) flown by Dale Earnhardt. Dillon isn't fighting for a job like many other drivers. NASCAR, however, is full of generational drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Chase Elliot. And, of course, CEO Jim France is the son of the series' founder. The grandson of team owner Joe Gibbs, Ty, is often resented for his silver spoon while other legacy drivers, like Dale Jr, are worshiped. Dillon's reputation is closer to Gibbs' than Earnhardt's, so there's plenty of fan vitriol over his win.

Personally, I don't take issue with Dillon's behavior-it was undoubtedly an incredibly dirty move, but he was playing in the sandbox NASCAR created. My real problem is with NASCAR's lax rules policy and enforcement. My experience with local oval racing, the kind of tracks where future NASCAR drivers cut their teeth, taught me that the feeder series mimic NASCAR and that it's a problem. Last year I wrote about tracks closing because the racers and spectators act like jerks. I want more folks hosting and participating in motorsports events, not fewer. Hamlin mentioned this issue when he said, "What happens is you see young guys coming up in the short track ranks seeing that, and they think it's fine."

Considering all that, NASCAR's partial penalty seems light. It needed not only to deal with this incident but to set a precedent, something that would deter such potentially injurious behavior in the future. Childress Racing, by the way, said it will appeal the ruling.

Like most things in life, the middle ground is where it's at. I'm no fan of the heavy rules blanket of F1 and its frequent driver tattletales. That seems beneath the feats those drivers perform. Yet NASCAR is too loose.

The controversy comes when NASCAR is at a crossroads. This is the last year of the so-called "Charter agreement" that gave teams a temporary franchise. In F1 and many stick-and-ball sports, powerful franchises are worth billions and their owners, to varying degrees, call the shots. In NASCAR, team ownership is more like a loan; after a certain number of years, the franchise simply expires. The teams, naturally, want a new deal, one that's closer to the permanent franchise system of other professional sports. Jeff Gordon said Hendricks Motorsports hasn't made a profit in ten years. Share the TV money, the teams say, and let us pull together to elevate NASCAR and build franchises that can be sold. (Denny Hamlin owns a team with basketball legend Michael Jordan and frequently discusses the interesting financial aspects on the podcast Actions Detrimental.)

NASCAR seems reluctant to share power-and who wouldn't be? The existing model has worked for decades, and it certainly has worked for the France family, which is reportedly worth billions.

The landscape, however, is changing. Competition for eyeballs is getting fiercer, and series are getting more ambitious. Formula 1, for instance, bought 40 acres of land in Las Vegas and is hosting that race, a job the company used to leave to local promotors who would pay a fee to F1 but then keep all ticket and advertising revenue. The CEO of Liberty Media, which owns F1, explained the evolution here. F1 also produces its own media, which means it's squeezed out the pesky and sometimes critical independents. F1's media has the best-often exclusive-access to drivers and teams, which attracts more eyeballs. While I'm no fan of F1's media model, I imagine that every sporting league is watching it.

Both the culture and the business of NASCAR are contributing to the fallout around the race at Richmond. I wasn't watching Sunday's NASCAR race when Dillon speared Logano. My 15-year-old son was, however, and his screams from our basement induced me to watch with him. I asked my kid what NASCAR should do with Dillon. He shrugged and said, "It doesn't matter what they do. They'll be playing that finish on their social channels for months."

Let's go back to my imagined NASCAR boardroom. I thought there might be fierce, earnest debate within NASCAR over how to handle the Dillon finish. How naive. They were probably high-fiving. While the grandstands were sparsely attended, everyone is talking about NASCAR this week, including yours truly. They've won the eyeball contest, at least for now. If there's a risk for NASCAR, it's from the sponsoring companies, who are likely asking themselves if NASCAR is a legitimate competition that they want to align with or simply a demolition derby with skinny young drivers. For the next few weeks, there will be many eyeballs watching for Hamlin and/or Logano to mete out justice on track. I sure will be. Does that make me part of the problem, or just human? I'm sure you see the complexities here.

As the NASCAR drama plays out, I'm traveling to California for the Broad Arrow auction and a week of car events on the Monterey Peninsula. Some of my colleagues will also be at the Woodward Dream Cruise. We'll be reporting from both and you can follow along on Hagerty.com/media and also on our social-media channels.

Have a great weekend!

Larry

P.S.: Your feedback and comments are welcome.

Please share this newsletter with your car-obsessed friends and encourage them to sign up for the free weekly email. The easy-to-complete signup page is here. And if you'd like to support the efforts of Hagerty Media, please consider joining the Hagerty Drivers Club.