“The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading…” and I need to unload on the deterrent system NASCAR has for the penalty structure and how it inadvertently incentivizes cheating.
This past Wednesday, NASCAR made changes to the penalty structure to give it more teeth and discourage attempts of cheating.
Among the changes included adding a stiffer penalty for cars that fail LIS inspection and are deemed “encumbered.”
“The changes are made to assure that we have a level playing field and make sure that there’s not a carrot out there for the team to have excessive violations when it comes to lug nuts and the LIS post-race measurements,” Scott Miller, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, told NASCAR.com. “As we worked with those penalties during the season we realized we probably needed to have a little bit more in place as Chase time rolled around.
“The Chase obviously changes a lot of scenarios for both NASCAR and the teams; it’s ramped up the intensity and there is a lot of scrutiny, as there is every week on everything (involving) technical infractions. This is really just a matter of us putting something in place so that should something happen, we have a means to effectively deal with it.”
A few hours after the checkered flag flew on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, it was announced that the winning No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota of Martin Truex Jr. and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet of Jimmie Johnson had failed post-race LIS inspection.
However, and this is where we get to my biggest problem with the penalty structure, the 78 car was not considered “encumbered” so he therefor gets to keep the win and the benefits of said win.
If you don’t understand all that technical babble, it basically translates to, “The 78 car was illegal, but not too illegal. So Truex gets to keep the benefits of his win.”
These teams have inadvertently been given license to cheat, but not too much that it’ll really bite them. Sure a 10 or 15-point penalty might bite Johnson in the ass when the checkered flag flies at Dover, but a points penalty means nothing in the case of Truex. It doesn’t matter if you take away all his points. His win means he’s locked into the next round.
In essence, NASCAR has inadvertently incentivized cheating.
Think about it. With the current wording of the rulebook, especially in regards to LIS failure, a team is essentially rewarded for finding ways to make a car illegal enough to fail inspection, but not enough to have the benefits of the win taken away.
If you don’t believe me, here’s a tweet from producer Tyler Burnett of the Motor Racing Network.
From the 78 audio we just played. "Remember to swerve on the track." hmmmm #NASCAR #askMRN
— Tyler Burnett (@_TylerBurnett) September 18, 2016
I’m not accusing the 78 team of cheating and I have no proof that they are. I only presented the above tweet to show how their LIS failure could be interpreted as “cheating.” However, they don’t help their case of not being perceived as “cheating” when Truex was explicitly told to swerve and this is the second straight week the 78 car has failed post-race inspection.
It was bound to happen one of these years. NASCAR has always been hesitant to take away wins because they want the at track audience to know who won when they saw it.
Maybe that made sense when newspapers were the main source of news, but the date this piece was published is September 18th, 2016. We now live in the internet age where communication with other people is almost instantaneous. And while I do still value the work of newspapers, news can be broken within seconds of an event happening via Twitter.
I’ll be very damn interested in what Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice-president and chief racing development officer, has to say about this tomorrow in his appearance on “The Morning Drive” because I’d love to know how “encumbered” could be interpreted as anything other than “his car wasn’t illegal enough.”
My plane is about to take off, so I must wrap this up.
THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS PIECE ARE SOLELY THOSE OF TUCKER WHITE. THEY MAY OR MAY NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF SPEEDWAYMEDIA.COM.
