In a wild 24 hours of NASCAR penalty news, NASCAR emerged relatively victorious in two appeals.
And Hendrick Motorsports is in the crosshairs of NASCAR. Again.
NASCAR docked Hendrick’s Alex Bowman and William Byron 60 points and five playoff points and suspended their interim crew chiefs for two races and fined them $75,000 after it found a modification to the greenhouse (center section of the car) during a teardown of their Richmond cars this week at NASCAR’s research and development center.
The suspensions issued Thursday to interim crew chiefs Greg Ives (Bowman) and Brian Campe (Byron) are not effective until next week because of the late notice (typically penalties are handed out Tuesday or Wednesday), making them relatively insignificant considering their interim crew chief roles were set to end with the Bristol Motor Speedway dirt race Sunday.
[Hendrick issued largest combined fine in NASCAR history, docked points]
With the points penalties, Bowman dropped from first to seventh in the Cup regular-season standings while Byron, the only driver with two Cup wins this year, dropped from fourth to 14th. Bowman finished eighth Sunday at Richmond, while Byron led a race-high 117 laps before a crash relegated him to 24th.
It was the second penalty in four weeks issued to the Hendrick Motorsports drivers, who along with their two teammates last week had 100-point penalties (and 10 playoff point penalties) rescinded by an appeals board, which upheld $100,000 fines and four-race suspensions to their crew chiefs for modifying radiator exit duct covers (louvers) last month at Phoenix.
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NASCAR likely felt a little vindicated following two appeals decisions Wednesday and Thursday. A different three-member appeals panel Wednesday reduced a 100-point penalty to 75 points and upheld the penalty of 10 playoff points to Kaulig Racing driver Justin Haley while also upholding the $100,000 fine and four-race suspension to crew chief Trent Owens for violating the same rule as the Hendrick cars at Phoenix.
Another three-member board (two members who were different than in the Kaulig appeal) Thursday upheld NASCAR’s penalty of 25 points and $50,000 to Denny Hamlin for intentionally wrecking Ross Chastain at Phoenix.
Hamlin sounds off on penalty
Denny Hamlin said “if I’m the only one getting a points penalty out of this whole thing, then there’s something wrong with the system that’s for sure.”
This won’t be the end of penalty news in the next few weeks as Kaulig Racing already has decided to take its case to NASCAR’s final appeals officer, Langley (Va.) Speedway promoter Bill Mullis. Hamlin will not make a final appeal to Mullis, a Joe Gibbs Racing spokesman said.
Hendrick Motorsports didn’t immediately say whether it will appeal its most recent penalties to Bowman and Byron.
“We are reviewing the penalties issued today by NASCAR and will determine next steps following Sunday’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway,” the team said in a statement.
NASCAR can inspect any car after the race and regularly takes cars for a deeper teardown to its North Carolina competition headquarters. Those cars are often called “randoms” because sometimes the cars are selected at random, but there doesn’t have to be anything random to it.
With the Hendrick cars of Kyle Larson and Josh Berry finishing 1-2 at Richmond, those cars underwent a partial teardown at the track because they were among the top-three finishers. Those cars typically are not taken for further inspection because they already have had a relatively thorough inspection.
NASCAR opted to take the other two Hendrick cars of Bowman and Byron to its competition headquarters. It did not take any others (it typically never takes one or two, occasionally more), a move that could be viewed as a way to tweak HMS after the appeals board handed NASCAR a significant defeat last week.
NASCAR Chief Operating Officer Steve O’Donnell said Thursday the taking of the Hendrick cars after Richmond was not a way to target Hendrick.
“We’ve taken cars for a long, long time,” O’Donnell said. “We take cars from various races …It can be from any organization at any time, and we’ve maintained that policy throughout my time at NASCAR.”
When Hendrick won its appeal, it seemed that Kaulig should have a good case to receive the same ruling. Kaulig Racing President Chris Rice was obviously frustrated that his team lost its appeal to its penalty from Phoenix except for a 25-point reduction while the Hendrick teams had all 100 points returned.
Byron’s costly crash
William Byron saw his chance at a solid finish at Richmond end with the spin on a restart and contact with Christopher Bell.
A louver is a piece that goes over the radiator exit duct and directs air over the hood. If it is modified, it can impact how the car handles. The louvers are all supplied by Dallara, and teams have been given permission to alter the parts so they can fit their hood openings. NASCAR determined that Hendrick and Kaulig louvers were modified beyond what was permissible.
Haley’s car had only one of the two louvers confiscated while all four Hendrick cars had both confiscated.
“When you look at everything that’s went down over the last couple of weeks, you just kind of go, ‘Man that’s just disheartening that Kaulig Racing is sitting here in this position,'” Rice said Wednesday on FS1’s NASCAR Race Hub.
“We kind of won — we got 25 points back — but it’s just like, ‘Hey, how do they look at us? How do they look at Kaulig Racing in the sport?'”
NASCAR’s appeals panels rarely give reasoning to their decisions. They just state whether a rule was violated and then if they change the sanctions. The appeals panel must stay within the penalty options of the rule violation — and the louver penalty (a Level 2 penalty) options include a points penalty of 75-120 points; meaning that the appeals panel either can decide no points are to be deducted or 75-120 points can be deducted, but not 1-74 points.
Well, that was the rule until Wednesday night when NASCAR updated wording in the rule book. The rule book will now require the appeals panel to give reasoning if it modifies a penalty.
And if it modifies a penalty, the appeals panel cannot wipe away an entire penalty option, it can only modify within the range for the level of penalty that occurred.
The new rules go into effect starting with any penalties issued this weekend and beyond — they didn’t apply to appeals today and wouldn’t apply to a Hendrick appeal for the penalties issued earlier today.
O’Donnell said the sanctioning body was as frustrated as many in the garage were with the Hendrick team having all of its points penalties rescinded.
“We were surprised as anyone about that ruling where someone was found to have violated a rule and an appeals panel chose to take away points,” O’Donnell said. “Going forward, we’re going to change that because it is not right. … There’s a reason we put points in a penalty.”
The rules on modifying a penalty also apply to the final appeals officer.
In the final appeal, the burden of proof shifts to the team rather than NASCAR.
Kaulig crew chief Owens, whose suspension was deferred pending the initial appeal, will begin serving his four-race suspension this weekend at Bristol. The Hendrick primary crew chiefs had been serving their suspensions once the original Phoenix penalty was issued, and Bristol will be their last of the four-race ban. Crew chiefs who are suspended can be at the track but they cannot be in the garage or pit road and cannot be on the team radio.
The Hendrick penalties announced Thursday were considered Level 1 penalties, a less serious violation than the penalties issued for Phoenix.
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass, and sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass.
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