Earlier this week, NASCAR issued substantial penalties to the three teams involved in what series officials deemed to be a form of race manipulation — the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet of Ross Chastain, and the No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota of Bubba Wallace. Crew chiefs, spotters, and key executives were suspended for one week. Each team and driver were docked 50 points, and fined $200,000 (100k for the team and 100k for the driver).

Initially, all three teams made it clear that they intended to appeal the penalties. 23XI, who is also fighting for the Cup title this weekend with Tyler Reddick, quickly decided to withdraw their appeal. But both Chevrolet teams involved moved forward. However, after Trackhouse lost their appeal on Thursday evening, RCR lost their own.

Those who heard the case from Trackhouse: Kelly Housby, Lyn St. James, and Steve York. Trackhouse will not appeal the penalty any further.

In a statement released from the panel, they explained the decision: “We feel in the best interest of racing and to protect the integrity of the sport, it was appropriate to uphold and affirm NASCAR’s decision with regard to the NASCAR rule 4.4, attempting to manipulate the outcome of the race.”

Ty Majeski, who will compete for the 2024 Truck title on Friday with ThorSport, was the final driver to transfer into the Championship 4 at Martinsville. As part of his Championship 4 duties, he, along with other final four members of each series were required to be in attendance Tuesday of this week for a production day to create and film content for the upcoming weekend. Majeski, however, wasn’t there, resulting in a $12,500 fine from NASCAR. Series officials cited “failure to complete media obligations” as the reason.

But it’s not like Majeski was having a lazy day at home or simply forgot. He had flown home to the pivotal battleground state of Wisconsin to vote in the 2024 presidential election. 

And as Majeski noted, he wasn’t even part of the Championship 4 until locking in last weekend, just a few days before Election Day. And unlike many in the NASCAR world, he is registered to vote in a state other than North Carolina, thus creating this unique conflict.

Ty Majeski, ThorSport Racing, Road Ranger Ford F-150

Photo by: John Harrelson / NKP / Motorsport Images

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“I didn’t know I was gonna be in the Championship 4 until a few days prior. I’ve always in my whole life been an election day vote guy. I’ve never done an absentee ballot. I wanted to make sure my vote was counted.”

“It’s obviously been a whirlwind for sure,” said Majeski on Thursday. “Like I said, I’m really focused on the race Friday night. I felt like I needed to do my duty as a US citizen to vote. My team owners and I, Duke [Thorson], Rhonda [Thorson] and Allison [Thorson], we all made the decision to exercise that right.”

Majeski and team intend to appeal the fine, and yes, he was fully aware that he was skipping production day to vote.

“I didn’t specifically have much communication with NASCAR prior, said Majeski  I let everybody internally at ThorSport handle those conversations prior to not being there on Tuesday, so I feel like they knew our position and it’s kind of unprecedented.

“It’s unfortunate circumstances for everybody. I don’t think anybody wants to be put in that position, but we have to have a free country to race in and that’s just part of being a US citizen, so I wanted to exercise that right.”

Max Verstappen’s rocky relationship with “Drive to Survive” is well-documented. The three-time world champion offers very little when he’s mic’d up in front of the cameras, and even boycotted the series altogether for a time. So it might be surprising to learn that Verstappen has been getting candid on camera for years — just not for Netflix. Nick Hoedeman, who’s directed nearly a dozen documentaries about Verstappen since 2017, explained why he’s been able to paint such an intimate portrait of the Red Bull driver when other documentarians have failed.  

“We never stage anything,” Hoedeman told Motorsport. “It’s all authentic. If I don’t capture it, he’s never going to do it again. What you see is what you get.” The Dutch filmmaker, who admitted he wasn’t a fan of Formula 1 before he was tapped to work with a then-teenaged Verstappen, said it took years to build trust with him and his tight-knit inner circle. 

“It wasn’t the first day, it wasn’t even the first year, it took time for him to trust me,” Hoedeman explained. “And I think it’s a big plus that I wasn’t a fan because I really couldn’t do the job I did for the last few years if I was,” he went on. “Now Max knows that we’re not manipulating the story … and he knows that when I’m around, I’ll be there for him.” 

Max Verstappen in his early years

Photo by: ViaPlay

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The first season of “Drive to Survive” depicts an intensely-focused Verstappen in contrast with his laid-back, joke-telling Aussie teammate Daniel Ricciardo. Though their on-track rivalry was real, the two were, and remain, friends off-track. In contrast, Hoedeman said that his films only “broadcast what really happens.” 

“We’re not going to create stories,” he said. “We have a relationship that is based on trust and when I’m around he can speak freely. I’m never travelling with a big group with Max. It’s only me, or I have one DOP (director of photography) with me, so it always stays quite personal and private.” 

The collection of 11 documentaries, now available to stream in the US and the UK on ViaPlay, give fans a peek behind the scenes of his life, both at the track and at home. The 2023 release, “Anatomy of a Champion,” offers a particularly revealing portrait of a fractured family unit that eventually found its way back together, and explores the complexities of a childhood moulded by ambition. That three-part series features rare comments from Verstappen about the impact of his parents’ divorce when he was nine and his father Jos’ controversial parenting methods. He even addresses the family patriarch’s run-ins with the law and brief jail stint, along with an infamous incident where Jos left a young Max at a gas station alone, which has become baked into modern F1 folklore. 

“He’s quite open-minded [but we had to] find a way to talk about it, and find that right moment,” Hoedeman said. One such moment captured in the film was an impromptu family lunch with Max, his sister Victoria, and both parents. The touching scene, which happened naturally rather than being staged by the crew, became one of the film’s centerpieces.

“The most surprising thing about Max is that he’s just just a normal boy,” Hoedeman noted. “Everybody thinks he has the most extravagant life but he just likes being at home with his family and friends. Of course, he’s in a private jet travelling the world, but deep down inside, he’s still that five year old boy who just loves to be in a racing car.”

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Aprilia rider Aleix Espargaro says he “burned his hands” during a hot MotoGP race in Malaysia where he struggled to 13th place.

The Aprilia RS-GP is infamous for its overheating problems, with both Espargaro and team-mate Maverick Vinales having repeatedly expressed concerns about its adverse effects during some of the flyaway races in Asia.

According to Espargaro, the Noale brand has made no progress in this direction this year, which meant that he found it hard to even make it to the finish in last weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix.

Withstanding the heat exuded from the bike for 19 laps in a crash-shortened race, the Spaniard came away with just three championship points as he benefited from incidents further up the pack.

Speaking afterwards, the 35-year-old revealed that the issues not only compromised his own performance at Sepang, but also meant that the bike was running down on power.

“It was very tough,” he described. “I knew that in these types of races [where] it is very very hot, it is extremely difficult for us. And even more if you start that far on the grid, it has been a real nightmare. 

“The engine was really slow, I couldn’t overtake anybody. The engine was very, very slow due to the heat. 

“I was [only] able to overtake Raul. Then I suffered a lot the last three laps where I almost couldn’t make it to the end, I couldn’t handle the handlebar. The heat was amazing.

“I burned my hands and had to open my visor. The heat is the Achilles heel of this bike.”

Espargaro wasn’t the only Aprilia rider to complain about heat issues on a hot and sunny day in Malaysia.

Raul Fernandez, Trackhouse Racing

Photo by: Asif Zubairi

Riding a 2024 RS-GP with last year’s engine, Trackhouse rider Raul Fernandez also felt the effects of the bike in Malaysia as he desperately tried to get some air blown onto him on Sepang’s long straights.

“Super difficult to manage with the temperature on the bike. The last four laps I was done. I tried to end the race [out of] respect to the team, respect for all my mechanics.

“The last four laps I couldn’t live on the bike. All the straight I had my head out of the bike to take some air. It is very difficult especially when you have slipstream you don’t take air.

“I don’t feel the hand, I don’t feel the foot. I couldn’t take the air. It is safe but it is really difficult.”

Vinales wasn’t impacted as severely by an overheating bike as Espargaro and Fernandez, finishing a relatively strong seventh between the Yamahas of Fabio Quartararo and Alex Rins.

But the 29-year-old spent most of the race in clean air, with Quartararo circulating several seconds ahead of him in sixth.

While the NASCAR playoff format has become a proverbial punching bag for people these days, and sometimes unfairly so, what happened last weekend at Martinsville is 100% a byproduct of it. The NASCAR playoffs are structured in a way so that title favorites like Kyle Larson can easily be knocked out of championship contention and drivers with so-so seasons like Joey Logano get to fight for the crown. And that’s not a knock against Logano, who has once again nailed this all or nothing format. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

And the game deserved plenty of hate after Martinsville. This wasn’t a teammate pushing another to the win at Talladega, but a blatant attempt to bend the outcome to one manufacturer or another’s will. The drivers involved weren’t even on the same team as the drivers who benefitted from shenanigans, but manufacturers have so much sway over the sport now, Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon can’t even think about taking that position from William Byron, even though they’re racers — they want to finish as high as possible. Then there’s Bubba Wallace who claimed something was wrong with his car, but obviously, NASCAR saw that claim as race manipulation as well. 

These are two problems colliding at once — the ever-tightening alignment between teams of the same manufacturer, and NASCAR’s current championship format showing the uglier side of that.

None of what happened on that final lap was racing, and it was only happening because of this format. NASCAR’s latest format forces Game 7 moments leading to these situations where drivers are put in uncomfortable positions where they have to be more worried about the playoff drivers and what’s happening in their race than what’s happening in their own. And due to how tightly aligned teams are now through manufacturer loyalty, it’s like three super teams out there — Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota — on the track at this point of the season. 

Hey, if it was the No. 48 HMS Chevy of Alex Bowman behind Byron, I feel like I’d be less frustrated with all of this. Of course a teammate is going to help, just like Ryan Blaney played blocker for Logano in the 2022 title-decider instead of going for the win himself. But why should Dillon and Chastain have to worry about Byron? Because they all drive for the same car make and that supersedes everything else in 2024. People are mad at these drivers, but what choice did they have? 

#24: William Byron, Hendrick Motorsports, Liberty University Chevrolet Camaro, #3: Austin Dillon, Richard Childress Racing, Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet Camaro

Photo by: John K Harrelson / NKP / Motorsport Images

Remember how Parker Retzlaff faced criticism because he tried to win at Daytona earlier this year? He had to publicly explain why a young driver in a car that rarely contends for race wins attempted to win a race. And why? Because his late-race push to Harrison Burton cost fellow Chevy driver Kyle Busch a win — and an automatic playoff berth. Even fans were mad!

This madness has now bled into the fanbase, who fully expect manufacturer allegiances to trump everything else in these critical races. And what what happened at Martinsville won’t stop unless NASCAR puts a stop to it. These points penalties and fines and one-race suspensions for the bad actors are not going to stop this.  Like in 2022, when NASCAR issued a penalty to Stewart-Haas Racing for the same thing. If they wanted to make a real statement, they would have thrown the No. 24 and the No. 20 out of the Championship 4 on Sunday night. SpinGate in 2013 did not end with Clint Bowyer’s penalty. NASCAR took Martin Truex Jr. — who benefitted from the interference but had nothing to do with it — and removed him from the playoffs. 

This is more about the format itself but people were shocked when Chastain chose to race for the win last year at Phoenix instead of bowing to the Championship 4 drivers. If drivers can’t race for the win, why are the non-contenders even out there “competing?” Might as well just race with the title contenders and no one else like the 2006 Cars movie.