NASCAR clears Hall of Fame Racing

By Jeff Gluck - Associate Editor

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Article Rating: 2.3
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JOLIET, Ill. – NASCAR held J.J. Yeley’s No. 96 car in the garage as the rest of the field fired the engines and then issued a one-lap penalty at the start of the race, due to what officials said was an unapproved part.
 
But after the race, NASCAR met with Hall of Fame racing co-owner Tom Garfinkel and apparently cleared the team of any wrongdoing.
 
“NASCAR had reason to believe we were doing something we shouldn’t have been doing – and we weren’t doing it,” Garfinkel said. “But they had sufficient reason to believe that because of some mistakes in procedure that we made.”
 
Yeley said that each week, his team uses a drink system that requires crew members to put a cold water bag into the car before the race. If they put it in early, it gets too hot and isn’t drinkable.
 
But NASCAR apparently felt something was amiss, and ran the car through inspection both with and without the water bag to address weight concerns.
 
Officials apparently suspected that the No. 96 team had gone to the old trick of putting lead in the water bag to make extra weight. All cars are supposed to be within a certain weight.
 
“They were replacing or changing out their water system or drink system without NASCAR supervision, and we take moving weight in the car around seriously,” NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton said.
 
As the command to start engines was given, Yeley was held for a warmup lap and then assessed a penalty for “disobeying a NASCAR request” as soon as the race started, which put the team a lap down.
 
But with a competition caution on lap 35, Yeley got the free pass and rallied to finish 24th.
 
Still, the driver was frustrated after the race with how NASCAR handled the situation.
 
“It was hard to find anyone that really knew what was going on, even on the officials’ side, before the race started,” he said. “They rolled us out, they gave us basically a one-lap penalty for some odd reason. It’s just really disappointing that someone couldn’t come up and clearly express why we were getting penalized or why there was any kind of infraction, especially for something we’ve been doing week in and week out. We weren’t trying to cheat.”
 
After the race, Pemberton said the team had “served our penalties.”
 
“We’re done with them,” he said. “We’re comfortable with that team and we feel like they weren’t trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”
 
Said Garfinkel: “There is no funny business. We made mistakes in procedure; there was no sort of malice and ill intent or anything like that. There was no lead in the water bottle. … They listened to our side of the story and told us what we did wrong, and they were fair about it.”

Average Rating: 2.3

Comments

4 responses to "NASCAR clears Hall of Fame Racing"
  1. 1
    4da88 said:
    Jul 13, 2008 at 5:25 AM

    Unbelievable! Leave it to NASCAR.

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  2. 2
    mike simpson said:
    Jul 13, 2008 at 10:13 AM

    NASCAR IS SO MUCH THAT THEY THINK EVERYBODY IS TRING TO GET SOMETHING OVER ON THEM. IF THEY THINK THAT ,THEY CAUSED IT BY TRYING TO PLAY GOD. NASCAR HAS TAKEN AWAY SO MUCH THAT IT ISN'T REAL RACING ANYMORE. BUT THEY ARE SO BLIND THAT THEY CANN'T SEEIT.

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  3. 3
    oink jackson said:
    Jul 13, 2008 at 1:11 PM

    maybe they didnt get their kick back

    Report as Abuse
  4. 4
    emily bagwell said:
    Jul 15, 2008 at 7:54 PM

    Well, every mistake just gets better and better---hard to believe! Oink, I'd like to give them a kick(back) in the A@#.

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