(By Greg Engle)
Posted: Thursday,October 29th, 2009
(By Reid Spencer, Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service)
Expressing your displeasure can be costly, as Nationwide Series driver Steve Wallace found out Wednesday.
Irate at Matt Kenseth over late-race contact that had spun him into the outside wall and cost him a possible top-five finish, Wallace tagged Kenseth’s Ford on pit road after Saturday’s Kroger 250 at Memphis Motorsports Park.
NASCAR, which traditionally has taken a dim view of drivers using their cars as weapons, fined Wallace $5,000 and placed him on probation until Dec. 31.
Steve Wallace
With a 20th-place finish at Memphis, Wallace lost ground to Justin Allgaier, who ran 19th, in the battle for the fifth position in the series standings. Wallace fell one spot to seventh in the points and trails fifth-place Allgaier by 117 points with three races left in the season. Only the top five finishers in the series are recognized on stage during the annual awards banquet in Florida.
Consistent with its treatment of a similar Nationwide race incident involving Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards in August 2008 at Bristol, NASCAR chose not to penalize Wallace any championship points. In 2005, Tony Stewart was fined $5,000 and placed on probation (but not docked points) for bumping the car of Brian Vickers after a Nationwide race at Watkins Glen.
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