The final caution in Saturday night’s race at Richmond might have been due to a Matt Kenseth penalty.

NBC’s Scan All this week uncovered some revealing chatter about the incident between Kenseth and Jeffrey Earnhardt. Contact from Kenseth to the backmarker car of Earnhardt caused a caution on lap 327 when Earnhardt’s car spun around and he backed into the wall. It was the only spin or crash that happened in the 400-lap race.

Kenseth had been black-flagged for both a commitment line violation and a pit road speeding violation on lap 321 when he made a green-flag pit stop. Because it happened under green, Kenseth was due to serve a pass-through penalty on pit road for the infractions. That penalty would have dropped Kenseth at least another lap down if he had to serve it under green.

He didn’t because of the caution for Earnhardt going around. The change in consequences was not lost on Earnhardt’s team or others in the field.

“Six just wrecked him so he didn’t have to pit under green,” Ryan Blaney told his crew chief.

“He did it on purpose. He had a black flag at the line, just so you know,” Earnhardt’s spotter said.

Kenseth said on his radio that his car drug the splitter and slid up into Earnhardt’s. He apologized for the incident.

Because the caution came out for Earnhardt’s crash, Kenseth didn’t have to serve his penalty under green or lose another lap. He was simply sent to the end of the field for the restart according to NASCAR’s penalty sheet. The crash — intentional or not — saved him a lap or so, but Kenseth still finished 25th, four laps off the pace.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter

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