Openness should carry over to NASCAR's R&D Center
Bob Pockrass
Bob Pockrass began covering NASCAR in 1992, primarily covering short-track racing and events. He has worked for Street & Smith's Motorsports Group since 2003.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – NASCAR’s garage and technical inspection area is one of incredible openness. Anyone in the garage can go look at other cars and can watch prerace and postrace technical inspections.
It would be good if teams could go do that at NASCAR’s Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C., this week when the Hendrick Motorsports cars of Mark Martin and Jimmie Johnson are measured.
There are too many non-believers in the garage, those who believe that the Hendrick teams got away with something and did more than push to the edge of the boundaries with their cars at Dover.
It’s hard to say. And NASCAR took a step in credibility that it wanted to police the sport by taking those cars after the Kansas race to be checked. But now NASCAR needs to go a step further and either make video available or let people in to watch the Hendrick cars get measured.
NASCAR will always have judgment calls that impact its credibility. When it has a chance to show this is not judgment, it needs to do so. This is one of those times.
