NASCAR's cheating culture unmasked during the playoffs
NASCAR's cheating culture unmasked during the playoffs
The NASCAR creed has always been "If you do not cheat, you do not try," and that has never changed despite the effort of the series to keep things in order.
Now that culture has resurfaced again and at the most inopportune moment for the besieged series.
There is one race ahead to set the championship, Sunday in Phoenix, and star driver Kevin Harvick has been caught up in the latest scandal. NASCAR discovered that Harvick had a car that won an illegal race - his second of the season - after his victory at Texas Motor Speedway earned him an automatic seat in the November 18 title race in Florida.
The problem was with a spoiler that had been modified to give Harvick an aerodynamic advantage, as he dominated and won for the eighth time in the Cup Series this season. The advantage Harvick had is irrelevant: NASCAR's cheating levels believe that Stewart-Haas Racing was so deceptive that the intention can not be questioned.
Once NASCAR recovered the car from Texas and at its Research and Development Center, the spoiler was removed and it was determined that it was not the part supplied by the seller. Instead, NASCAR believes that SHR made its own spoiler, passed it as one of the mandatory seller and used it to help Harvick win.
The details were announced Wednesday night, 10 hours after Harvick's post was revoked in the final. NASCAR has refused for several years to give specific details about the infractions (keep secret ideas on how to control the system), but changed the course of Harvick's sanction due to growing criticism about the severity of his punishment. Harvick not only lost his place in the last four at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but also must run the last two weeks of the season without his crew chief and the head of his car.
Scott Miller, NASCAR's senior vice president of competition, said he felt SHR took the idea of pushing the limits and exploring technology "into ridiculous territory on the border."
With the bets so high this weekend in Phoenix, where seven drivers will compete for three open spots in the championship race, NASCAR will review the spoilers on the track.
"It's unfortunate that we are now removing the spoilers and have to do another inspection when the teams really should bring legal cars to the race track," Miller said.
SHR has not challenged NASCAR's accusation of cheating. The team said it would not appeal the sanction and the vice president of the competition, Greg Zipadelli, said in a statement that "NASCAR determined that we ventured into an area that does not fit into its rule book." The team has not made any members available for comment, and Harvick is not scheduled to speak with the media in Phoenix, where he is a nine-time winner. One of his victories came in the spring, part of a three-race winning streak marked by an illegal car in Las Vegas a week earlier.
The latest infraction raises questions about whether SHR has "ventured into an area not accommodated" by NASCAR regulations with its other drivers. His full line of four cars, Harvick, Kurt Busch, Clint Bowyer and Aric Almirola, is still eligible for the title race.
It was not just SHR last weekend, either. NASCAR took three cars back to its R & D Center after Texas and the three failed disassembly inspections. The team of Ryan Blaney was punished and so was the team of Erik Jones.
If the only three cars inspected failed, what about the other 37 cars in the field on Sunday?
"We certainly can not take the field of 40 cars to R & D," Miller said, explaining how problems get lost on the track. "We have time limitations on the race track to do these inspections, we have small windows and tight windows for inspections, and we could spend about five minutes with each of the 40 cars during the three hours." "The window we have for the inspection, to think that we can analyze a car so well in five minutes and in three hours in the Research and Development Center is a little unreal".
The last major scandal in NASCAR was in 2013, when Michael Waltrip Racing manipulated the end of a race in Richmond to try to get Martin Truex Jr. into the playoffs. It led to a larger NASCAR investigation that discovered at least one other case of race manipulation.
The latest scandal may be the turning point for a renewed sanctions system next season. Miller said the sanctioning body will seek tougher sanctions during the offseason if a team can not even pass the first round of inspection.
"We realize that we probably need to increase the seriousness of what happens on the race track, and we hope to change the culture where we do not have to play this game of cat and mouse." with teams all the time, "Miller said.
What happens if a car fails the inspection after winning the title? It was not until Wednesday morning, long after Sunday's race, that NASCAR revealed that Harvick's car had failed the inspection.
Miller promised intense scrutiny on the four cars competing in the championship at Homestead, and said the post-race procedure is similar to the Daytona 500, where engines are examined on the track after the race.
"Knowing that there is so much in the line, we can concentrate on those cars a little more than on the 40-car field during the regular season," Miller said. "So we will increase the intensity of keeping people focused on those cars throughout the weekend and we will analyze those cars to a large extent, before and after the race."
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