{"id":16217,"date":"2023-10-03T14:00:23","date_gmt":"2023-10-03T18:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=16217"},"modified":"2023-10-03T13:27:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-03T17:27:04","slug":"nascar-truck-series-matt-crafton-and-nick-sanchez-fined-for-talladega-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/10\/03\/nascar-truck-series-matt-crafton-and-nick-sanchez-fined-for-talladega-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Truck Series: Matt Crafton and Nick Sanchez fined for Talladega fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Following their fight after the Truck Series race at Talladega, Matt Crafton has been fined $25k and Nick Sanchez fined $5,000.<\/h3>\n<p>NASCAR Officials announced this morning the penalties for the two drivers,\u00a0<strong>Matt Crafton\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/02\/23\/nascar-truck-series-rookie-spotlight-nick-sanchez\/\" target=\"_self\"><strong>Nick Sanchez<\/strong><\/a>, involved in the fight following the Love&#8217;s Truck Stop 250 at Talladega Superspeedway. Crafton will receive a 25,000-dollar penalty for his actions. Sanchez will receive a 5,000-dollar penalty. His father, Rene Sanchez, will be suspended for the season&#8217;s last two races.<\/p>\n<p>The whole incident started over a wreck on lap 92 of Saturday&#8217;s Truck Series race. Matt Crafton believes Nick Sanchez caused the big wreck because he dived to the inside of Crafton but checked up. While checking up, Sanchez turned the #88 F-150, causing the massive pile-up. Ten trucks were involved in the incident.<\/p>\n<p>Senior Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer, was on NASCAR Radio this morning to discuss the reasoning for the fines. Crafton was given a heavier penalty because he had time to think over what happened off-track before initiating a fight. Sanchez received the penalty for his threats following the fight. Sawyer said suspensions were on the table as a punishment.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"NASCAR&#039;s Sawyer on penalties to Crafton, Sanchez\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FGzPD0lOYAY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Matt Crafton has not responded to the penalty, yet. Nick Sanchez has responded to the penalty, posting a response on Twitter;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"zxx\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/MOIVZc72R9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/MOIVZc72R9<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Nicholas Sanchez (@Nicksanchez080) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Nicksanchez080\/status\/1709173760081723795?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">October 3, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Why is this penalty fair?<\/h3>\n<p>I believe this penalty is fair retribution for all the parties involved. I agree with NASCAR&#8217;s decision-making when it comes to the fine amounts. Crafton had time to think over what happened, maybe cool off, and approach the situation more calmly. Sanchez&#8217;s comments, as Sawyer said on NASCAR radio, understandable that you are in the heat of the moment, cannot be said.<\/p>\n<p>While suspensions can be useful in certain applications, this was not one.<\/p>\n<p>NASCAR has the tough job of policing fights, and dishing out the punishments afterwards. Earlier this year,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CPhc9LMuoBI&amp;ab_channel=NASCARonFOX\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Noah Gragson<\/strong> and\u00a0<strong>Ross Chastain<\/strong> fought following the first race at Kansas Speedway.<\/a> No penalties came from that altercation.<\/p>\n<h3>What happens next for Crafton and Sanchez?<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Nick Sanchez made a statement following his release from the infield medical center and mentioned he might have a broken nose. No update on that has been given. Sanchez and the #2 team for REV Racing are currently fighting for a spot in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nascar.com\/nascar-craftsman-truck-series\/2023-playoffs\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">championship four<\/a>. The #2 is +3 above the cut-off line going into the second to last race of the season, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2022\/10\/24\/nascar-truck-series-5-takeaways-from-homestead-miami\/\" target=\"_self\">Homestead-Miami<\/a>. This will be his first trip to his hometown track in the Truck Series, and I think he has some fire to go win the race and lock himself into Phoenix and the championship race.<\/p>\n<p>Matt Crafton has had a tough 2023. He barely made it into the playoffs and was eliminated after the first round. The #88 Menard&#8217;s team only has two top-fives and eight top tens. Many on social media were calling for Crafton&#8217;s retirement. While this year has been a struggle for him, I think he might have a win still in the tank. Will it come this season, not likely, they are not running well enough for that to happen.<\/p>\n<p>We can only watch and see if this incident will affect any on-track action. I think Crafton might make these final two races hard on Sanchez. If that is so, NASCAR might have to get involved.<\/p>\n<h3>The Truck Series is back on track on Saturday, October 21st, at Homestead-Miami Speedway for the Baptist Health 200.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following their fight after the Truck Series race at Talladega, Matt Crafton has been fined $25k and Nick Sanchez fined $5,000. NASCAR Officials announced this morning the penalties for the two drivers,\u00a0Matt Crafton\u00a0and\u00a0Nick Sanchez, involved in the fight following the Love&#8217;s Truck Stop 250 at Talladega Superspeedway. Crafton will receive a 25,000-dollar penalty for his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4347,"featured_media":16218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1666],"tags":[331,2077,1300],"class_list":["post-16217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nascar-camping-world-truck-series","tag-matt-crafton","tag-nick-sanchez","tag-talladega-superspeedway"],"modified_by":"Hayden Murdock","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4347"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}