As the laps wound down in Sunday’s XFINITY 500 at Martinsville Speedway, the cameras focused on race leader Ryan Blaney and postseason drivers William Byron and Christopher Bell as they battled to determine which will win 4th place in the championship.

Byron and Bell were the main characters in this story and spent the final 15 laps of Sunday’s event separated by just one point. However, there are certainly a few background characters that haven’t gone completely unnoticed.

Whether it was intentional or not, Bubba Wallace (#23), Austin Dillon (#3) and Ross Chastain (#1) all played a role in the outcome of the event.

Wallace runs a Toyota-backed entry for 23XI Racing, which has a relationship with Joe Gibbs Racing – the team that runs Christopher Bell’s No. 20. Meanwhile, both Dillon and Chastain drive for Chevrolet-backed organizations Richard Childress Racing and Trackhouse Racing.

NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer said in a post-race news conference that the sanctioning body will review the actions at the end of the race at Martinsville and decide if additional penalties are necessary.

“Yeah, we’ll look at everything,” Sawyer said. “Like I said before, we want to come back, like we would have done anyway. We’ll be back, we’ll take all the data, the videos. We will listen to the audio from the car. We will do all of this as we would any event.”

However, the 27-minute deliberation after the checkered flag, Sawyer says, was solely to decide whether or not Bell would be penalized for riding the outside wall, a penalty option that became available after the “Hail Melon” of to Ross Chastain in the fall of 2022.

So what exactly happened that everyone is so suspicious of the three non-playoff drivers?

In the closing stages of Sunday’s event, William Byron faded as his Chevrolet No. Liberty University’s 24 suffered damage from an earlier incident with Blaney and Shane Van Gisbergen, which slightly hit his toe and killed any long-term speed.

With 15 laps to go, Byron dropped to sixth. With Bell 18th and not on the lead lap, the gap had narrowed to just one point between them. Austin Dillon and Ross Chastain were sitting seventh and eighth when this pass was made and parked their Chevrolet Camaro entries behind the No. 24, running double-wide to prevent any progress.

Byron finished sixth, with Dillon and Chastain trailing behind him. However, it was clear that the #24 was holding the pack as Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Noah Gragson, Shane Van Gisbergen and Alex Bowman all closed in right behind the battle.

In the same time frame, they existed nearly five minutes of “abnormal radio communications” that transpired between Austin Dillon, crew chief Justin Alexander, and spotter Brandon Benesch, where the three parties can be heard discussing the postseason status of #24, as well as “the plan,” asking if Ross Chastain and crew chief Phil Surgen knew the plan mentioned.

“If we pass him, he’ll come out,” says a crewman in the No. 1 Chevrolet. 3 on the radio in the last laps of the race. At that moment, Dillon returns and asks his crew who Byron is competing against. “Keep me posted on this business, Justin (Alexander), if it changes,” says another crew member, believed to be the spotter.

As for the Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet no. 1, radio communications between Ross Chastain, crew chief Phil Surgen and spotter Brandon McReynolds indicate no foul play. The team’s only real suspicion comes when they are involved in Team No. communications. 3, when he asks if they (Chastain and Surgen) know about the plan.

With a keen eye on Byron and the Talladega-sized pack chasing him, at the other end of the track, Bubba Wallace was battling the No. 23 XFINITY Toyota Camry XSE from No. 18, the first car on a lap. down and just one place ahead of Christopher Bell.

The radio communications between Wallace, crew chief Bootie Barker and spotter Freddie Kraft are nowhere near as egregious as the Richard Childress Racing team, but what happens in the final laps of the event is probably open to some interpretation.

Wallace can be heard on the radio saying, “God forbid we don’t help his (Joe Gibbs Racing) car,” but the No. 23 is right behind Martin Truex, Jr. and a couple. laps later he is passed by his team owner, Denny Hamlin.

Despite his crew telling him to “fight 24 (Byron) with everything you’ve got” as they close in behind him. At this point in the race, Wallace is still one place ahead of Bell, and the gap between the No. 24 and the number 20 is only one point.

With three laps left, Wallace taps into the radio and says, “I think I’ve got a flat tire.” At that point, the dashcam shows the #23 very wobbly in the corners, as if it really is a tire going down, while running in the second or sometimes third lane.

The 23XI Racing driver’s pace slows significantly in the final three laps of the race, dropping a second or more from the pace he had set moments earlier. Wallace continues to lose time and on the last lap he is overtaken by the huge swarm of racing cars, which also includes Christopher Bell.

On the final lap of the race, Wallace let the pack of cars pass on the inside as the Joe Gibbs Racing driver spun into Turn 3, contacting the side of the No. 1 Toyota Camry XSE. 23, sending both cars onto the racetrack and Bell into the outside wall – where he decides to hit the gas pedal and ride the wall.

After the fact, the crew asks Wallace if he needs a fire extinguisher to put out a fire – Tyler Reddick, his 23XI Racing teammate, had a fire under the hood of his car that ended up taking him out of the race prematurely.

Whatever you make of the actions of the three drivers, they had an impact on the outcome of the event and the championship, which saw Byron hold on to sixth place and advance to Championship 4 after Christopher Bell was penalized with a riding safety penalty. the wall.

In the coming days, NASCAR will investigate the radio communications, SMT data, dash cams and whatever information they can get and decide whether or not the sanctioning body will have to issue some race-tampering penalties — penalties that can be hefty.