NASCAR's Rule Violation Quandary

Steve O'Donnell, the extremely bright and competent Executive Vice President of NASCAR announced this week that NASCAR has rescinded the penalties levied against Martin Truex Jr. and Jimmie Johnson for failing the post race inspection at Chicagoland Speedway last Sunday. At best, NASCAR made the best of a bad situation, at worst it leaves NASCAR rules and discipline process in a mess during its most important part of its racing season.

Truex Jr. and Johnson both failed the post race inspections last Sunday. Normally those violations would have resulted in a 10 point reduction as a P2 penalty. In Truex's case the benefits for the race victory would not have been voided. The 10 point penalty would have put Johnson in serious trouble of advancing into the next round of the Chase. NASCAR saw the significant difference of the penalties for the same violations on two different drivers. Thus the new ruling.

"If we applied those penalties, the post-race penalty really would not treat each competitor fairly," O'Donnell said. "We also saw this as a potential situation that we could see repeating itself for the next nine races of the Chase going forward. So we made the decision coming out of Chicago not to penalize for the post-race infractions we saw in Chicago.

O'Donnell was in agreement with most fans that these violations were of the minor nature. Moving forward, only the more severe P4 penalties will result in penalties. This seems to meet the common sense criteria.

Hall of Famer and current Fox NASCAR Broadcaster, Daryl Waltrip tweeted this after the original penalties were announced Sunday night. "a 3400lb car running on a bumpy racetrack for 3-4hrs has casual contact with other cars or the wall, now let's laser it and see what moved!"

What i find crazy is NASCAR is in its playoff mode, the most important part of its schedule, and the penalty system still seems to be a moving target. Look, I think NASCAR has done the right thing here in amending these penalties. I just can't believe that sometime during this past season someone in NASCAR didn't foresee this very situation occurring.

Perhaps NASCAR thought the teams would all now be familiar with the expectations of the new rules and violations would be a rare occurrence. Yeah right! These teams, since the beginning of time, have been scratching and clawing for every fraction of a second both on and off the track. They'll push that envelope until BOOM, they've pushed it to far.

I hate it for the sport that seemingly after after race we're talking about failed inspections, fines and penalties. We've seen some of the sports best on track action in many years and it seems instead of talking about the great product on the track we're talking about lasers and high tech equipment off it.

Waltrip, after the O'Donnell announcement, tweeted, "We've got to quit calling our crew chiefs and drivers cheaters start taking about the incredible racing we are seeing, today's was a win win."

Amen!

Thanks for reading. Listen to WTBQ radio on Monday and Friday mornings at 8:45 as I join Frank, Taylor and the Morning Show gang to discuss all the current happenings in NASCAR. You can also follow me on twitter @JimLaplante.