Clint Bowyer's Devastating Penalty

After Clint Bowyer's exciting win last Sunday at Loudon in the first Chase race of 2010, he vaulted from twelfth to second in the points standings, just 35 points behind Denny Hamlin.  Now, after a 150-point penalty from NASCAR, he is back in twelfth again, 185 points behind Hamlin and 49 points behind Matt Kenseth, who is eleventh.  It's a devastating penalty that has almost killed Bowyer's title hopes for 2010.

We heard some rumblings early in the week.  NASCAR announced that the car Bowyer drove in the final race of the "regular season" at Richmond was close to being illegal.  That is, the car was legal, but was flirting dangerously close to the tolerance of one of the many, many measurements NASCAR checks.  NASCAR officials met with Richard Childress Racing representatives to discuss the problem.

At the time, many NASCAR commentators dismissed this as not a very big deal.  It is the job of the crew chief to push the edge of the envelope.  If they can do that without going over, they are doing their job.  Turns out that it was a very big deal.

“When we work with the teams, when [we] see them heading in a direction that could wind up bad for everybody, we get together and we talk about it,” NASCAR vice president for competition Robin Pemberton said.

“As we’ve done in the past and will continue to do so in trying to regulate the sport, a big responsibility of NASCAR is to work as hard to keep people out of trouble as it is to write penalties,” Cup Series director John Darby said. “Obviously, when it gets to the point that we have to write a penalty, it’s not fun for everybody. So if we can take steps in the interim or in the in-betweens to put something to rest and not have it be an issue, well, by all means we’ll exhaust every effort that we can to do that.

Rewind to last Sunday at Loudon. With the white flag in sight, Tony Stewart ran out of gas, relinquishing the lead to Clint Bowyer, who was running on fumes and trying to hold off Denny Hamlin. Bowyer won the race, then ran out of gas just as he started doing his celebratory burnout.  His car had to be pushed to Victory Lane by a wrecker.

The car passed the post-race inspection at the track, but was one of several that was taken back to the NASCAR Research and Development Center near Charlotte for a more detailed inspection.   There the car was found to be illegal.  NASCAR declined to explain what the violation was or even to state if the violation could have given the #33 car an unfair advantage.

It was left up to Richard Childress to explain that the violation was related to how the body is hung on the frame.  The car was too high in the rear, exceeding specifications by less than 1/16th of an inch.  Childress claims that the car was legal when it left the shop and that the violation could have been caused by the wrecker that pushed the car to Victory Lane.  Also, several cars gave Bowyer a congratulatory tap in the rear on the cooldown lap.  Childress has vowed to appeal the penalty.

NASCAR doesn't agree with Childress's assessment.

“We looked at a lot of different things and we have a lot of documentation from cars from the last four years, and we understand that we have had cars with some severe body damage and cars without, and we don’t feel that the incidental contact from a push of the wrecker helped push this car out of tolerance at all,” NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton said.

Childress also said that they were informed by NASCAR that the car would be taken to the R&D Center after the New Hampshire race because they had come so close to failing inspection the week before.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all that we would send a car to New Hampshire that wasn’t within NASCAR’s tolerances. I am confident we fixed the area of concern and the New Hampshire car left the race shop well within the tolerances required by NASCAR.”

Richard Childress was also docked 150 owner points. Crew chief Shane Wilson was fined $150,000.  Wilson and car chief Chad Haney were also suspended for six weeks.  Wilson and Haney can continue in their appointed roles until appeals are exhausted.  Bowyer is still credited with the win at Loudon. 

With Bowyer now back at the bottom of the 12-man Chase field, move the other Chasers up a spot in the points standings.  Denny Hamlin's lead is now 45 points over the new guy in second, Kevin Harvick.

The penalties, though excessive, are in line with those handed down to Brian Vickers's team for a similar violation in 2008.  No problems have been reported with the other RCR cars of Harvick and Jeff Burton.

An interesting side note:  Robin Pemberton, one of those charged with handing down the penalties, was once on the other side of the issue.  In 1990, Pemberton was the crew chief for Mark Martin when the team was docked 46 points for using an illegal carburetor spacer plate in a victory at Richmond.  Martin eventually lost the championship to Dale Earnhardt that year by just 26 points.