F1 Fanatic

@Roald None of that justifies responding with violence, which is completely unacceptable.

What a bunch of uncivilized people.
I know they are on the edge and then Gordon does such a stupid move, but for the pitcrew to respond like that.. wow.
I don’t think that it would be unfair to exclude both teams from this years championship based on what happened. One thing is being stupid, another is to deliberately drive into another driver. I think that an exclusion would be okay, considering that peoples lives are effectively at risk.
And then the other teams pitcrew goes absolutely crazy.. I know they are feeling robbed and everything, but to resort to violence? My god. I don’t support drivers and teams being PR puppets, but going out and hitting someone because he has been an idiot is just to take it too far. That is kids stuff. Let both teams go home with nothing from this year, and let them reflect on how you go motor-racing and how you don’t.
Incidents like that makes NASCAR look like a redneck festival of noise, beer and brawls. And not a top of the range motor-sport. If they at least punish behaviour like that incredibly hard, then it will only be the teams that looks like idiots, not the whole sport.

@Roald Fact: they are all professionals. If every frustration led to punching people, then the world would melt… a “heat of the moment” moment can happen, but punching every member of the team isn’t that, it’s rage. Who cares if he’s agry?

Fact #2: NASCAR allows this kind of thing. And the crowd. They’d have acted differently if this kind of attitudes wasn’t “normal”.

NASCAR obviously don’t think that Gordon needs to be parked:

Jeff Gordon was fined $100,000, docked 25 driver points and put on probation until Dec. 31 for his on-track altercation with Clint Bowyer during the AdvoCare 500, a violation of Section 12-1 (actions detrimental to stock car racing).

http://www.nascar.com/news/121112/jgordon-bkeselowski-cbowyer-crew-chief-penalties/index.html

I’ve said before that I think that there are too many penalties for causing avoidable collisions in F1 these days. But NASCAR have obviously gone from one extreme to another. This case was much more obvious and more dangerous than any of Maldonado’s actions and Gordon openly admitted that it was deliberate and that he wasn’t going to say sorry for what he did. This isn’t dirty street racing involving a bunch of criminals, professional drivers should know how to behave. It’s sad that NASCAR have failed to deliver the right message.

When I was younger and followed a lot of categories like BTCC, F3000, GT, DTM, etc. I only loosely followed NASCAR, it did not appeal to me. This changed lately though – I only began to rediscover other categories and NASCAR is now firmly near the top of the list. I followed news for some time after watching the wild finish at the Glen this year, got acquainted with the rules, heard about the Chase fight unfolding between Johnson and Keselowski, and finally catched a replay of their outright fender-to-fender racing at the last but one restart at Texas few laps from the finish, fighting for the lead side-by-side for two laps at that late stage of the season. That was the last straw, I then watched some great races this year, the Shootout, Daytona, Bristol, Talladega, etc., and catched the end of the race at Phoenix live.

This was the first time I watched NASCAR live – and instantly I got the wildest finish of the year. (Well, I heard the second Dega race is also a contender…) I was embarrased slightly at Gordon and Bowyer as well, but the general thing that stuck me the most was the late season suspense and that emotions got to the surface a lot more than I used to see in F1. Keselowski’s reaction in the press room shortly afterwards, the G-W-C events, how he survived, etc. It was insane and while I could certainly be glad for Gordon to control himself in the future, the whole experience was overwhelming once again.