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February 21, 2008
Just Shut Up!!! And Pay Your Fine
By Mark Young
Yesterday was judgment day in NASCAR land. Fines and suspensions were passed out to all those teams who tried to sneak stuff under the radar in technical inspection at Daytona totaling over $200,000, hundreds of points deducted, and over 50 total race suspensions. I am not going to go into the details because it would take up too much space but I encourage you to go check out Jim Utter’s article on the main page to understand the depth of these fines. What really has me shaking my head and asking myself “Don’t these guys get it?” is that they are all so surprised that it happened and that NASCAR is being un-just.
For that I say to all the teams JUST SHUT-UP and pay your fines.
Now I have written here and said on the radio that NASCAR’s rule book is actually an etch-a-sketch. Don’t like a rule? Just shake it up and rewrite it. But dog-gone-it these teams know what is legal and what is not. Robby Gordon is telling anyone who will listen that the $100,000 fine, 100 point deduction, and six race suspension of his crew-chief is not his fault. HE says that the nose piece of his Dodge, an unapproved design, was purchased from Gillette-Evernham and should have been right when it came to his shop. Come on Robby, are you telling us you don’t have a set of templates at your shop to make sure your car leaves legal? The last thing that should happen before the car goes into the hauler is have “the claw” lowered onto it and verified that everything is right.
David Poole put it best to a fan who called in defending Robby. That car had it’s nose piece confiscated. But when it went out onto the track later that day it had a legal nose piece attached to it. I bet the back-up car in the hauler still had the one that was there when it left N.C. too. These guys KNEW what they were doing. ALL OF THEM.
The teams should have figured out after Junior’s boo-boo and the Hendrick oopsie at Sonoma
February 21, 2008 | Permalink
Comments
Mark,
There's cheating. A purposeful attempt to disregard a rule to gain an advantage. I'm putting Waltrip's Daytona fuel tampering, Robby's nose piece, and my personal favorite, the 15/16ths Yunick Chevelle that won the '67 Daytona pole. In that class.
There's innovation. A purposeful attempt to test the grey areas of a rule for an advantage. NASCAR people have always been great innovators. It only gets called cheating when NASCAR says, "Oops we didn't think of that."
There have always been cheaters and innovators in NASCAR. NASCAR's first problem is that it couldn't write a rule to save its own ass. Its second problem is that it regulates so many things that often important items get missed. And, thirdly, NASCAR could stop cheating tomorrow if they wanted to. Throw some race disqualifications in there, toss in some don't bother coming next week's. They'll get the message. But, until they can do #1, and stop doing #2, they can't do #3 and they'll never stop cheating/innovation.
Posted by: Keith | Feb 21, 2008 11:07:26 AM
Chief, I would PARK the teams for a race because money means nothing
Posted by: Fan#5 | Feb 21, 2008 11:12:51 AM
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