Nascar lowers the boom - Cheaters never prosper

[gad5264]

All 3 of Evernham Motorsports crew chiefs for Kahne(4 races, 50 points), Riggs and Sadler(2 races, 25 points each) are suspended for the 500 this Sunday. Also Kennseth's crew chief is gone for 4 races and loses 50 points.

[Mrs. Wallnut]

Well maybe with such harsh penalties the rest of the racing world will not try to push the limits and bend the rules.

[Richard in Smithville]

From watching past years, it seems that there are loads of areas in the rule book that are "grey". It seems NASCAR enforces a rule when it pleases them. There have been loads of complaints from drivers/owners that NASCAR is not clear enough on just what is the rule until a team is told that they broke it.

I'm not saying that these teams are totally inocent but is there a defining line to say how far a team can push before it becomes illegal?

[mpc]

Much of the NASCAR rule book says "you can't do this." It often doesn't say "you can do this." So teams try something new which, by the letter of what's written isn't forbidden. But if NASCAR inspectors don't like it on general principle than it's an infraction - NASCAR has a nice, generic "detrimental to the sport" type of rule. That can mean anything they want. And whenever a team violates some rule, NASCAR also hits them with this rule too.

Some rules are written as "no device which can alter..." type of thing - NASCAR isn't outlawing a specific gizmo, instead they're outlawing anything that can do some undesired task. That one is really open to interpretation because a team can argue "this gizmo does this primarily" while the inspectors say "yeah but it also does this illegal thing." As Richard noted NASCAR seems to nail things on a whim when it suits them. I've seen instances where a team had some item on the car for 3 or 4 races - and passed multiple inspections - and then suddenly got fined for it. Not exactly consistent...

As far as I know there isn't much of a procedure for teams to walk up to NASCAR and say "hey, we just invented something. Is it legal?" It'll be pretty much shot down most of the time (at least that was the experience of folks I know working with Toyota trucks a few years ago) so they were forced to just install it and run with it as long as they could until an inspector noticed it. As long as it wasn't obviously forbidden by the rules they tried this. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it worked for a few races, and other times they got screwed right away. And new rules popped up by the next race.

I don't care for NASCAR's fining of crew chiefs for every infraction either. With this type of attitude, NASCAR is basically saying "you're not allowed to do anything - we really want a spec series" and I detest spec series. Pre-race/pre-qualifying inspection should be "safe" for the teams - if something is unacceptable (but not against any specific "thou shalt not do rule") then the team should be told they have to fix it. But not fined for trying something new - unless it's blatantly obviously trying to deceive the rules like that rear decklid bending thing on the 48 car last year.

mpc

[jackellis]

I constantly have to deal with attempts to bend the rules in my work. So long as there's money involved, people will bend the rules as hard as they can and hope they don't get caught. I think it's human nature.

What makes it worse is how often more rules just provide more harbors for gaming. People justify pushing the envelope on the basis that if it isn't prohibited, it's allowed.

I'm not a NASCAR fan but I agree with mpc that teams shouldn't be fined if an "infraction" is discovered before the race starts. That's dumb and unfair.