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Aikman questions penalty
By Bob Pockrass
Monday, February 27, 2006
FONTANA, Calif. -- Pro Football Hall-of-Famer to be Troy Aikman questioned NASCAR's 25-point penalty for an illegal carburetor modification found on the No. 96 Hall of Fame Racing car in post-qualifying inspection Feb. 12 for the Daytona 500.
Aikman and co-owner Roger Staubach were not expecting a points penalty because Nextel Cup Series Director John Darby said Feb. 14 that it didn't look as if it was an intentional violation. But NASCAR announced Feb. 21 that crew chief Philippe Lopez was fined $25,000 and the team lost 25 driver points and owner points.
"I don't know how that encourages new ownership and how that encourages new sponsors to get involved in the sport to where penalties are handed down that are very prohibitive and affect the ability of these people to bring millions of dollars and see results," Aikman said prior to the Auto Club 500 at California Speedway. "It's discouraging to say the least."
The team is appealing the decision.
"Whenever we have to issue a penalty, we do a history of penalties to try to stay consistent," Darby said Feb. 24. "The huge majority of carburetor violations that we've seen over the last five years have all been the same penalties as were issued to the 96."
The illegal modification was in one of the four ports in the carburetor, team general partner Bill Saunders said after the infraction was found but before the penalty was announced. He added that it was from bad machinery.
"Right is right and wrong is wrong," Aikman said Feb. 26. "To me, that was unequivocally wrong.
"I don't know there is anymore I can say about it or anymore we can do about it. I'm hoping that more reasonable heads prevail when they get a chance to look at the appeal, but I'm not confident anything will happen there because I'm not sure why they wouldn't prevail when they were handing down penalties to begin with."
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