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“The accident was a racing incident,” Pemberton said. “How they conducted themselves after that, after the accident and coming onto pit road and from there through the rest of the evening is why the penalties were equal.”

NASCAR officials came into this season saying drivers would be given more latitude to show emotion this year, and the relatively light nature of Tuesday’s punishments would seem to support that.

NASCAR representative Ramsey Poston said the measures would have been more severe if Stewart and Busch had rubbed fenders while pit crew members were working on pit road, endangering their safety.

“We took a lot into consideration,” Poston said. “The drivers do have greater latitude, pit road was closed, there was no personnel on the track. It’s an emotional sport, there’s emotion on the track. But they were not banging each other on a ‘hot’ pit road. That is very different and would have been dealt with much more severely.”

But even as they take a more permissive attitude toward driver misbehavior, Poston said NASCAR officials are going to begin making probation more meaningful.