NASCAR wants no role in the outcome of the Chase
I think NASCAR is trying to stay out of the game.
It does not want to penalize any of the teams in the Chase For The Sprint Cup and, as a result, dock them points, the loss of which could easily take them out of the championship hunt.
NASCAR has already set a precedent of the loss of 100 points for a rules violation, a penalty that would be devastating for any team in the Chase.
If it had to enforce such a penalty again over the last seven races it would surely affect the Chase and, possibly, ultimately determine the champion.
That does NASCAR no good. It realizes that. It wants the competitors to race for the title, and it wants to stay the heck out of the way.
I think the Chase teams know that. To me, that should be obvious to them after the sanctioning body warned the Hendrick Motorsports teams of Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin that they were very close to violating the tolerances granted in body measurement.
NASCAR announced that, after Dover post-race inspection and examination at its research and development center in Concord, N.C., it had found the No. 48 and the No. 5 cars to be dangerously close to tolerance irregularity.
They were not illegal, but the thinking here is that they were so close NASCAR felt it had to take action.
Hendrick engineers were given the benefit of seeing how NASCAR conducted its measurements, which, I assume, was different from how Hendrick’s group did them. The sanctioning body informed the teams that they should do the same lest they risk serious problems in the future.
When it comes to rules, teams always test the limits. But I think NASCAR gave Hendrick a message that should be heeded by all the Chase teams: “Push the envelope all you want but be informed we have our limits.”
It has been said that NASCAR might have found some real irregularities in the Hendrick cars and chose to ignore them because of favoritism.
Nothing new there. NASCAR has always been accused of playing favorites.
I can’t, for certain, say that it was not doing so with Hendrick. But if it was, it was incredibly stupid, which means I can’t buy it.
Again, I suggest that NASCAR may have told – or indicated by example - all the teams in the Chase that it does not want to have any role in the outcome through legislation.
Why would NASCAR court the risk of being the entity that played a big role in determining its champion? I would think it would much prefer to stand aside and let the contenders slug it out among themselves.
Which suggests that it would not only tell Hendrick Motorsports how close it has come to an infraction but also, if the need arises, the other teams in the Chase as well.
If a Chase team does something that is obviously illegal and gets caught during an inspection process, NASCAR has no choice. But I think it would much prefer not to deal with that.
Leave the outcome of the Chase to the teams. It’s what NASCAR wants – as it should.
And I think we can agree that is how it should be.
