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Did Hendrick taint the Chase?
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Late one evening last week the news broke that NASCAR had found two cars, the No. 5 and No. 48 Chevy’s belonging to Hendrick Motorsports, might have problems.
The two cars in question were from the Dover race. Mark Martin finished second in the race in the No. 5 and Jimmie Johnson won in the No. 48. The story floating around was that NASCAR had found problems with the cars in post race inspection at the track and had taken them back to the R&D Center in Concord for further study.
Soon after the news leaked out there was a whisper of that dreaded word ‘cheating’.
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That night all around the NASCAR Nation you could almost hear the sound of the collective holding of breaths.
Cheating.
The defending champion along with the guy everyone loves to love, the same guy who could win it all this year and no one would mind a bit.
Cheating.
That seemed to be the connotation that night. The word hung out there like a carrot waiting to be grabbed. It would be the biggest scandal in NASCAR history. The point’s leader, Captain America, caught cheating.
No doubt there were phone calls behind the scenes and even a few offices lit up past midnight as NASCAR scrambled to get an explanation ready.
And on Thursday NASCAR issued a statement as the media fins swam in a circle at their feet
"The 48 and 5 were brought back to the R&D center. We've been doing this since the inception of the new car as a part of routine post-race inspection. We bring the winner and a random pick back to the R&D center after each event. While both cars passed post-race inspection, we informed the 48 and 5 they were extremely close on some of the tolerances."
In other words, the guys at Hendrick did what they are good at it; they pushed the envelope, nearly to the breaking point. They hadn’t ripped the paper, but it was sure strained.
How close? According to Sprint Cup Series director John Darby, also known as the ‘man’:
"The numbers that we publish in the rulebook in most cases are the nominal or 'Here's-what-you-must-be' numbers,'" Darby told the Sporting News. "The claw grid (templates) that we use, the height sticks -- most of our checking devices -- have that nominal number indicated, as well as colors. Take our height stick, for example. There's where the number's supposed to be, then a green area, a yellow area and a red area. The green is your working area that's published in the rulebook. Yellow is what we're going to give you in good faith. When you hit red, you've gone too far. If you want to relate it to that type of a situation, Hendrick's cars were at the line that defines the difference between yellow and red.
NASCAR called the respective crew chiefs in, showed them what they had found and engaged them in a discussion. Pretty much saying, you passed this time…but don’t let it come this close again.
Hendrick has been known to push the limit before. In 1997 Jeff Gordon with then crew chief Ray Evernham brought a car to the All-Star Event that they named T-Rex. The car passed post race inspection, but NASCAR told them to never bring it to a track again.
And this isn’t the first time Chad Knaus has been embroiled in controversy. In February 2006 he was ‘escorted’ from the confines of Daytona International Speedway after the No. 48 failed inspection for being too low. And in 2007 Knaus presented the No. 48 for inspection at Infineon Raceway and NASCAR disqualified the car. Johnson was forced to start at the rear of the field in a backup car and Knaus was suspended for six races.
The problem at Infineon in 2007 was the shape of the fenders on the car, the same type of problem NASCAR found last week.
But was it cheating?
Of course not. It was simply the ‘limit pushing’, the creative experimentation, Hendrick and Knaus are famous for.
Unlike other areas of the car, NASCAR has some tolerances, gray areas, when it comes to the bodywork and smart crew chiefs try to exploit that by pushing it as far as they can get.
There are other parts of the car where NASCAR allows no quarter…the engine for example. Under the hood NASCAR won’t be so forgiving. Witness one Carl Long. Back in May Long was found to have a car with an engine that was over bored, essentially too big. Long was suspended 12 weeks and his crew chief was fined $200,000. The suspension was later lowered to eight weeks on appeal but the fine remained.
In the case of the Hendrick cars, the area they decided to exploit was one that NASCAR does allow a little gray area for and in an effort to find every bit of speed Hendrick pushed the gray area right to the line.
Maybe the worst thing to come out of the whole deal for Hendrick was having NASCAR explain to everyone in the world exactly what the crew chiefs were doing. Most of us were scratching our heads wondering what they were really talking about, while all the other crew chiefs in the garage were furiously taking notes and saying to themselves ‘ah ha’.
But was it cheating?
Of course not, it was just one of them racin’ deals.
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