By Deb Williams
BROOKLYN, Mich. (Aug. 17) – Throughout NASCAR's history, race teams have always played a cat-and-mouse game with the sanctioning body when it came to trying to gain an advantage. If you wanted to get something through inspection before a race, put three or four items on the car for the inspectors to catch and they probably wouldn't find the one you really wanted to get past their watchful eye.
However, the incident at Michigan International Speedway involving Joe Gibbs Racing's Nationwide Series cars after Saturday's race probably marks the first time crewmen have ever attempted to mislead an off-track test designed to check an engine's horsepower.
If you're not an intensely competitive person or you've never worked on a race team, you don't understand the tremendous amount of hours crews spend attempting to gain an advantage and the pride that exists when one is found. However, once the success is gained, NASCAR “penalizes” the team or the manufacturer in its never ending quest to provide a “level playing field.” In fact, it may be the only sport where too much success turns into a handicap.
One could say it was frustration over being penalized for success that led a JGR crew member or members to place a quarter-inch magnet under the gas pedal that prevented the car's accelerator from going all the way to the floor. That, in turn, produced a false horsepower reading during a dynamometer test after Saturday's Carfax 250 in which JGR drivers Tony Stewart finished third and Joey Logano placed seventh.
Last month, NASCAR ordered all engines with a cylinder bore spacing more than 4.470 inches to use tapered spacers with smaller holes. The change affected only Toyota engines in the Nationwide Series and was expected to rob an engine of about 15 horsepower. Obviously, JGR has made strides in regaining some of the lost horsepower even though J.D. Gibbs, the organization's president, said Sunday they hadn't recouped all of it.
Still, there were crew members that wanted to falsify NASCAR's policy making data to apparently give the impression the Toyotas didn't possess as much horsepower as the sanctioning body thought.
Granted, the crew members didn't think they would get caught. However, what they failed to consider was the way their team would be perceived by the garage, fans and corporate America. The Gibbs organization has always been viewed as beyond reproach. The crewmen didn't intend to tarnish Gibbs'
image or upset Toyota and the team's sponsors, but to those not familiar with the sport's philosophy “if it's not in the rule book, it's not illegal,” they did.
Ingenuity in racing has always been celebrated. In fact, most of NASCAR's rule book is the result of it. However, when corporate America began its sponsorship love affair with stock car racing and NASCAR sought to make it a national sport enjoyed by mainstream America, ingenuity appeared headed for extinction. Thank goodness, ingenuity hasn't joined the do-do. However, the consequences it renders are much higher today than ever before in the sport's history, and affect more than just the people responsible for it.
The magnet incident at MIS was clever, but served no purpose other than to embarrass JGR.
08-17-2008, 10:50 PM
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