2022 Penalties by Team and Race

My analysis of the 2022 penalties by team is up over at NBC Sports. For those wanting a little more information, here’s some additional detail, including penalties by race. I limited my graph of total penalties to the most-penalized drivers. I also excluded some of the lower-running drivers. But here’s the total penalty information for all drivers who drove 30 or more races in 2022, and who ranked in the top 35 in points at the end of the season.

Pre-race penalties

Of the 808 total penalties (402 unintentional penalties), 102 or 25.3% were levied before the races started. The graph below shows penalties by race.

In-Race Penalties

273 of the penalties (68.0%) were imposed during races. This continues a downward trend from 317 last year and 337 the year before.

Here’s a plot of the penalties by race and type of violation. Driver penalties are in warm colors and crew penalties in cool colors.

Post-Race Penalties

Only 27 (6.7%) of the penalties were imposed after races, but these are the doozies. Among them, we’re got suspensions (crew chiefs, crew members and a driver), points penalties, and monetary fines.

Here’s the breakdown for those penalties. Yes, they are all in purple. The colors are so that I can put all of these on a single graph if I wanted to.

A lot of stuff went down at Pocono. That’s where Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch were disqualified after NASCAR found pieces of tape under the car’s wrap.