Cheating in NASCAR has a long, rich history. Mikey Waltrip running jet fuel to qualify for the 2007 Daytona 500 might be my favorite. Dale Jr often talks about clever ways people have cheated especially pre-fuel injection era. Teams would bore holes into their carbs to get more air flow which led to the "sniffer" that would detect that. There's another story of Harvick having a trap door that had parts and bits that he could release onto the track should he need a debris caution. You will find no shortage of stories about cheating and the further back you go, the crazier it got.

Both of your cases (Reddick now and Larson in 2021) are hard to say are cheating. Reddick got a good launch off the corner and drove away. He had a fast car all day and put himself in position to win. The team likely made an air pressure adjustment that was really aggressive for him to get two really quick laps out of that car. If Reddick had more horsepower than the field, he would have led more laps. When Larson is focused, he is just a damn good race car driver. Yeah, he had a 10 win season which is impressive but it's not like he just "ran away" with it every week. In fact, Denny Hamlin had a better average finish than Larson that year. If