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When Chad
Knaus was suspended for four races at the beginning of the
season, Robert Yates was one of his harshest critics. The crew
chief of the #48 team was tagged for an illegal modification to
the car during preparations for the Daytona 500, and NASCAR
acted swiftly. But Yates didn’t think it was strong enough.
"If
there is language in the rule book about not doing that
particular thing, then he ought to have to go race the Talladega
short track the rest of his life,'' Yates said in February. "If
the language covers that area… he should be gone forever. That's
just stealing.''
Yates even went on to say that if an employee of one of his own
teams was caught intentionally cheating, that employee would be
fired.
Now, 10
races later, Yates may be in that exact situation.
Following
the Saturday night race at Richmond, The #88 UPS car driven by
Dale Jarrett failed inspection by NASCAR officials, who
discovered an illegally mounted sway bar. The alteration of the
sway bar would likely be in an effort to improve the car’s
agility when turning through the corners. The infraction was
enough to earn driver Dale Jarrett a 25 point penalty, dropping
him from 11th to 12th in the standings.
Owner Robert Yates also received a 25 point penalty. Crew chief
Richard “Slugger” Labbe was slapped with a $25,000 fine as well
as a four race suspension.
So does
Yates stand by his earlier statements, and fire his crew chief?
Not at
this time. Yates said that the violation was “not
intentional”. He explained that, “in
this case, we interpreted the rules differently from NASCAR” and
plans to appeal the fines and point deductions. He did go on to
say that if the appeal committee believes the altercation was
intentional, they will “accept those terms.”
Would that mean he would then fire Labbe, as he stated earlier
in the season? Or were the words he spoke in reaction to the
situation with Chad Knaus only words?
Perhaps there is a big difference between “intentional” and
“unintentional”, but how does an owner know the truth? And
should it make a difference to NASCAR officials? At what point
is an altercation to equipment simply a different
“interpretation” and when is it “cheating”? Should the
penalties be different one way or the other?
Think back to the Olympics a few short months ago. A US
Skelaton champion was not allowed to compete because he failed a
drug test. How did the drug get into his system? He was using
a hair restoration product that happened to contain a substance
banned by the Olympic Committee. Did he intentionally take
performance enhancing drugs? No. Was he punished as if it was
intentional? Yes. It’s a simple case of “did he or did he not
break the rule?”
NASCAR should be no different. If you break a rule, it
shouldn’t matter if it was intentional or not. If you broke the
rule, you broke the rule.
And if an owner is going to say that NASCAR should penalize a
certain way when someone breaks a rule, that should apply to his
own team members as well. |
