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NASCAR’s punishment far too harsh
Darrell Waltrip

When NASCAR put the templates they use during inspection on the No. 24 and No. 48 cars at Sonoma, they fit. Those cars were legal to race.

Not allowing the Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson to qualify and starting them at the rear of the field are pretty big penalties in and of themselves. I just don’t see how NASCAR justifies docking the drivers and teams 100 driver and owner points and suspending the crew chiefs six weeks with $100,000 fines apiece.
I know you’re going to say, “DW, you’re on the Hendrick payroll.” I’m not. I’m a competitor who has driven cars and owned teams. I look at these situations through the eyes of someone that has been in NASCAR for a long time.

Have you seen the egg crate, the cradle that they built for the little Car of Tomorrow baby? It’s huge. It drops down over the top of the car and incorporates every template known to man. There’s hardly an area on the car that it doesn’t document and verify.

Obviously, they forgot to put a template or a check point on at least one area of the car because that’s the area where No. 48 crew chief Chad Knaus and No. 24 crew chief Steve Letarte worked. Ever since we’ve been racing, teams have put templates on the cars and looked at what’s left. If there’s a place where you can kind of work around that template, that’s always been acceptable. That’s never been a problem.

In the past, if NASCAR saw something on the car that the template didn’t check, they might say, “Don’t bring it back that way anymore. We’re not going to accept it. We don’t want to see it.” Or they might even make a template off of that car that weekend so you and others don’t try to do it again.

In 2005, Knaus brought a right rear shock to Dover. It wasn’t illegal, but it was a shock that it was built in a manner that NASCAR had never seen before. They didn’t even know how to check it. It was just different, but it wasn’t illegal. They didn’t disqualify him, and they didn’t penalize him or anything else. They just said, “We’re not going to allow it.” Then, they made a bulletin the next week, disallowing shocks that were built that way.

That’s been the norm in this business ever since I’ve been in it so when a competitor shows up at a track with something that nobody else had thought of, you don’t disqualify them. You may take that part or car away from them. You may tell them not to do it again. But that’s the end of it. You don’t penalize the team. If I were going to penalize anybody, I would penalize the people that built the templates with which they check the car. They left an area open that someone can manipulate a little bit.

If you ask anybody that’s ever raced, when the templates fit, your car is legal. If there’s something wrong outside that template area, they can make you fix it, but they don’t disqualify you, suspend you or fine you. That may be old school or old NASCAR, but that’s the way we’ve always done it. And it’s always been accepted by everybody.

To paraphrase the late Johnnie Cochran, if the templates fit, you must acquit.

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