Helton: NASCAR ups ante on penalties
By Bob Pockrass
Saturday, July 08, 2006
JOLIET, Ill. - Addressing the Busch Series drivers and crew chiefs Saturday morning, NASCAR President Mike Helton warned them that the recent six-week suspensions handed out by the sanctioning body could become the norm.
The penalties, including one to the team of Busch Series point leader Kevin Harvick, were issued for violations last week at Daytona. Suspensions for similar penalties in the past have ranged from two to four weeks.
Here is a text of Helton's comments:
"In light of last week's penalty notices, we thought it might be a good opportunity to revisit the inspection process in NASCAR. NASCAR's responsibility is to be sure that when cars roll out of the garage area on to pit road to get ready for qualifying or for the race, [they] are pretty much squared up with each other.
"That's why we have rules and regulations. That's why we have inspectors. That's why we have templates, and measuring and weighing gauges and boards with shocks and everything else on it because we feel like, we know, that is our responsibility. Car owners and crew chiefs, it's your responsibility to share that responsibility. You should bring to us cars that are straight up because we actually work harder to prove a car is correct than we would work to find something wrong with the car. We don't want to find anything wrong.
"But there is a responsibility for every guy that goes out on pit road to feel like his car is squared up against everybody else. If you choose not to feel that way, if you choose not to be part of that team, then be prepared for NASCAR to react.
"If you noticed this week, we bumped up our reaction. And we bumped up our reaction because, in our opinion, the comfort level that many people had gotten with the standard reactions is that, 'Well, OK, it's worth the gamble that if we get caught, to go ahead and pay the penalty and just go on down the road.'
"And that's not good. So what we've done is we've upped the ante. What I'm telling you today is that if you choose to go in that direction to test the system, then we will quickly raise the ante to get your attention to stop it because that is as an important part of the inspection process as the inspectors and the templates and the process that you go through every week here.
"It's real easy just to stay within the box and within the rules and everything works fine. If you choose to go out of them, be prepared for us to come down and come down harder than we have in the past to help this whole inspection process work out correctly."
After the meeting, Helton said that the severity of the penalties issued was partly caused by the crew chiefs already being on probation.
