Brian France defends 'quintessential NASCAR' comments on controversy: NASCAR Chairman Brian France defended his "quintessential NASCAR" comments in reference to #22-Joey Logano bumping #20-Matt Kenseth in the closing laps at Kansas Speedway during his year-end state-of-the-sport news conference Friday morning. The second year of the elimination-style Chase for the Sprint Cup has been clouded by Kenseth's retaliation against Logano in the Nov. 1 race at Martinsville Speedway when Kenseth was 10 laps down and Logano was the leader. Logano failed to advance out of the Eliminator Round to be one of the four finalists this weekend at Homestead. That was Kenseth's goal, since Logano had wrecked Kenseth while they battled for the lead with five laps remaining two weeks earlier at Kansas. France called the Kansas contact "quintessential NASCAR," but when Kenseth retaliated, NASCAR suspended Kenseth two races. In talking about what makes something "quintessential," France talked about Brad Keselowski's move that resulted in contact with Jeff Gordon late in the race last year at Texas, a move that resulted in a cut tire, a Gordon spin and an eventual pit-road brawl. "That's quintessential NASCAR [on the track] -- late in the race, wham, they're going at it," France said. "You've got to understand, that's us. That's what we do. That's what those guys do." France said no drivers have asked to sit down with NASCAR about where the line is on what they can and can't do. "The reason that they don't ask is that they know," France said. "They know that circumstances late in the race, blocking -- although I'm not a fan of blocking, that is part of racing -- contact, the short end of some of those exchanges that happen are all part of it and do not look to NASCAR to deal with that. They are part of racing. The line is if you intentionally ... banzai-ing into some situation with the sole purpose of taking somebody out, we'll deal with that. We dealt with that at Martinsville, as a matter of fact." See the full transcript of the interview on the Brian France State of the Sport Transcript page.(11-20-2015)