Policing NASCAR not a black-and-white issue
Garage has different reactions to Knaus' penalties
By Dave Rodman, NASCAR.COM
February 22, 2006
06:36 PM EST (23:36 GMT)
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- A day after NASCAR handed down additional penalties to two Nextel Cup Series teams that were caught with technical violations in post-qualifying inspection for the Daytona 500, competitors said they understood the difficult role NASCAR has policing its rulebook.
Compounding the problem, an informal poll found is the fact that NASCAR in 2006 is far from the atmosphere that existed in a bygone time when cheating -- more politely referred to as "stretching the envelope" -- was perhaps more condoned and certainly more prevalent.
On Tuesday, the sanctioning body announced
Jimmie Johnson's crew chief Chad Knaus would be suspended from NASCAR activity until March 22, placed on probation through Dec. 31 and fined $25,000 for his car's failure to pass NASCAR's body template inspection.
Knaus was sent home from Daytona's Speedweeks 2006 and will also miss races at California Speedway this weekend and subsequent events at Las Vegas and Atlanta.
Also on Tuesday, NASCAR announced that Hall of Fame Racing crew chief Philippe Lopez would be fined $25,000 for having an unapproved carburetor on driver
Terry Labonte's No. 96 Chevrolet. Labonte was also docked 25 driver points and owner William Saunders lost 25 owner points.
Hendrick's general manager Marshall Carlson on Tuesday reiterated owner
Rick Hendrick's stance that his team would not appeal the penalty. A Hall of Fame Racing spokesman said that team would, however, appeal the severity of its sanctions.
The groundswell over the inspection failures began during Speedweeks, when team owner Robert Yates, whose history in the sport includes time as a championship-winning engine builder that preceded 19 years as a car owner, spoke out in strong terms.
"Actually, I worked for a guy who, if you wanted to get him excited about racing, tell him you were going to cheat on something and he was all for it," Yates said. "Otherwise, he'd stay out and go coon hunting all night."
Less than a week ago, Yates went on to say that contravening a written rule should be dealt with severely while getting caught in the proverbial "gray areas" of the rulebook deserved an equal mix of congratulations and confrontation.
Also during Speedweeks, NASCAR vice president for competition Robin Pemberton said the idea that widespread cheating or stretching the rules in the NASCAR garage was invalid, but Yates slightly disagreed.
"We want to keep creations coming," Yates said. "I can think back for years now [and] I don't think anybody's beat the system. I haven't had one complaint about somebody beating us in a race because if the back of the car jacked up and they did it within the rules, more power to 'em.
"We'd just go to work and try to figure that out. And if the left-front falls down and it's all within the rules, more power to 'em. Those aren't really cheating items. It's when there's a clear rule written that you don't do this or that, [that I'd have a problem with something]."
In the wake of the most recent penalties, initially there was not much divergence in the garage area, particularly from
Ryan Newman, who on Sunday was quite critical of the Johnson/Knaus tandem.
"NASCAR has to lay down the law, and they have to be consistent in doing so," Newman said Tuesday. "I think that the penalty they have given to Chad Knaus is proof that they're trying to drive home the point that they're not going to tolerate much this year.
"Let me make it clear that I have nothing against Jimmie Johnson or his capabilities as a driver. I believe he's made his talent obvious time and time again. I'm more criticizing his crew chief than I am [Johnson] or his team."
Knaus' four-race suspension tied the longest such penalty in NASCAR history, which was levied against Richard Childress Racing crew chief Todd Berrier last year, after driver
Kevin Harvick's car also failed a post-qualifying inspection at Las Vegas.
The biggest difference was that Harvick and Childress each received a 25-point deduction in the standings last March. Pemberton said Tuesday that those point deductions and Tuesday's deductions to Hall of Fame Racing were a result of actual unapproved pieces on the respective cars that received them.
The pieces used to warp the configuration of Johnson's car in qualifying were not illegal, Pemberton said. Still, a perceived inconsistency was at the heart of Newman and Berrier's concerns.
"I expected [the penalty] to probably be at least similar to mine," Berrier said Wednesday morning. "I guess they elected not to do points for some reason that I'm not aware of -- but obviously they must have a reason.
"It's a new year -- a different year -- and we can't expect that they'd know what to do or they'd do anything based on what they've done in the past."
"Maybe they need to be a little stricter with their punishment," Newman said. "But as long as they're being consistent and making the sport fair for everyone, I'm totally cool with it."
The biggest issue Berrier had with Knaus' penalty was when the infraction occurred and the impact it had on the outcome of the Daytona 500, which both he and Johnson have maintained was virtually nil.
"First off, $25,000 doesn't mean anything," Berrier said of the monetary fine. "Secondly, it was qualifying, and qualifying doesn't really matter if you're in the top 35 in points anyway.
"Shame on us for thinking it does matter, and as teams and crew chiefs we want to do better than our fellow competitors. That's what makes us push the envelope, even though we do have a starting spot from being locked in by being in the top 35.
"If it was a race violation it would be different. But it doesn't typically happen after a race; it happens after qualifying. We get paid a ton of money to win a race, but I've got to be careful here because I don't want to have something go wrong that's really simple, and I've ended up shooting myself in the foot and sitting home for a month because of it -- but it doesn't seem to happen that way."
Berrier said putting the penalty structure down in the rulebook in black and white wouldn't be easy for NASCAR to accomplish.
"It would just be so hard to do," Berrier said, "because there would be so many things and so many areas that you're going to leave at their discretion that it would be hard to just say 'this is your penalty' -- you know what I'm saying?
"We get penalties for 'actions detrimental ...' That could be something I did while I was just walking around the garage area. They're typically not violations that are black and white -- like your cubic inches of the engine were too big or your tread width was too wide.
"More times than not it's just an unapproved part -- but anything could be unapproved. It would really be hard to list all those out. It's got to be at their discretion -- but at the same time you wonder sometimes, about that."
Berrier also said the restrictions in the current rulebook actually leave little latitude for creativity and ingenuity.
"It's getting to be less and less [prevalent]," Berrier said. "The box is getting tighter and tighter and tighter. I don't know if there's less opportunity, but the box is getting tighter so the areas in which you can be creative are a lot fewer and farther between.
"You've got to make more drastic changes in the areas that we are allowed to operate in, and maybe that's what makes us do some of the things we do -- I don't know.
"As they take different things away [with distinct rules] we have to look in a lot of different areas, which causes them to make rules again for that.
"And the more rules you make, the closer this racing gets to IROC racing -- and I don't know that that's exactly what we want."
Berrier cited some of the previous comeback performances by greats such as
Dale Earnhardt,
Darrell Waltrip and particularly
Bill Elliott, who made a legendary single-car comeback from nearly five miles behind at Talladega to win a race in 1985.
"That's because there weren't as tight of a rules package," Berrier said. "And the racing was pretty good then. I don't know if this stuff is the way of the future or not -- but it's the way that we're headed."
Linear Mode
