NASCAR officials signaled they will not penalize Alex Bowman and Cole Custer after it appeared that the teams gave the drivers stand down orders in an attempt to manipulate the outcome of the Cup Series race at the Charlotte Roval.

In car footage shared to social media by CBS Sports’ Steven Taranto show Custer’s team instructing their driver to go “Nice, and easy here, bud. Nice and easy” as he closed to the back of Joey Logano in the closing laps of the race while in a tight point battle with Ross Chastain to advance into the next round of the playoffs.

Additionally, Custer’s team informed him, “We can save our tires here for a late race restart.”

Saw some people saying Cole Custer didn’t try to pass Joey Logano in the final laps at the Roval so I went back and watched his onboard. Flagged this over the radio with about three to go:

“Andy, you got your watch on?”
“Nice and easy here, bud. Nice and easy.”
“We can save our… pic.twitter.com/w6SFG4DQrR

— Steven Taranto (@STaranto92) October 6, 2025

As for Bowman, the instructions were much more egregious. Bowman’s team told him, “Easy with it. Take care of your tires here” just as Denny Hamlin was working his way past Chastain.

That final instructed was then repeated as he pulled to the rear of Chastain, “Take care of your tires.”

Seems like Alex Bowman (apparently) also got a stand down order on the final lap once he caught Ross Chastain.

“Easy with it. Take care of your tires here.”
“Take care of your tires.” https://t.co/i8qNDiHyET pic.twitter.com/trIE3Y6uwB

— Steven Taranto (@STaranto92) October 6, 2025

During the most recent episode of Hauler Talk, NASCAR’s Managing Director of Racing Communications Mike Forde said, “Yes, we did review it. And the beauty of social media, here in this officiating era, we now have millions or at least thousands of officials sitting at home and reviewing HBO Max cameras and listening to radio transmissions. So it’s very, very difficult for anything to slip by.”

“And we do, like I said, have folks in remote race control listening to radio transmissions. We have people in race control itself listening to them. So we have a lot of it covered, but there are things that are going to slip through the crack no doubt about it. But it seems like they’re always going to be caught by the fans who are as tuned in as any sport. I will die on that hill. Really impressive work by our fans. So it’s going to come out.”

“We did review it,” he reiterated. “And nothing rose to the level of a penalty, like you said Nate. I think there will be communications. I think we have some meetings with teams. We have meetings with teams in general. Every week we meet with the crew chiefs to do pit selections. So at a certain during this week/weekend we will just remind teams, if they need a reminder, ‘Let’s not put yourselves or ourselves in jeopardy here. Fans should be coming to the racetrack and expecting a straight up race where each position is fought for as hard as possible especially at the end of the race.'”

“If we do see something or hear something we don’t like, we’re going to step in, which we have done now several times. [Cole Custer] was ironically, we talk about him this week, he got himself in trouble a couple of years ago at the Roval as well. So we are aware. And I think come this week and Vegas and Talladega maybe not as much so, but certainly Martinsville we’ll be on high alert again. And if we hear something we’ll certainly react if necessary.”

“We did review both those. Long story short, 41 and 48 didn’t feel it rose to the level of where we needed to take action, but we are planning on making the teams aware that our eyes and ears are open to any shenanigans,” he concluded.

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