'If NASCAR and the teams want the concept of this car to work, there's no choice.'
- Denny Hamlin became the first NASCAR Cup driver to have a win taken away from him and was also disqualified since Emanual Zervakis won at Wilson (N.C.) Speedway on April 17, 1960.
- The DQ marked only the second time in NASCAR history that both the winning and runner-up drivers were disqualified.
- Autoweek spoke with NASCAR On NBC analysts Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte—a former NASCAR Cup driver and NASCAR Cup crew chief, respectively, about the controversy.
If ever there was a theme song for NASCAR’s new Next Generation car and this past Sunday’s disqualification of race winner and runner-up Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch, it’s M.C. Hammer’s “You Can’t Touch This.”
That’s the message NASCAR is demanding of all its teams, both NASCAR On NBC analysts Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte—a former NASCAR Cup driver and NASCAR Cup crew chief, respectively—agree upon.
Kyle Busch, left, and Denny Hamlin took the brunt of NASCAR’s biggest race-day penalty in more than 60 years.
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Hamlin became the first driver to have a win taken away from him and was also disqualified since Emanual Zervakis won at Wilson (North Carolina) Speedway on April 17, 1960, when Zervakis was found to have an illegal fuel tank (the win went to Joe Weatherly).
And if you add Busch to the Hamlin mix, Sunday’s DQ marked only the second time in NASCAR history that both the winning and runner-up drivers were disqualified. The only other time that happened was December 11, 1955, at Palm Beach (Florida) Speedway when winner Joe Weatherly and runner-up Jim Reed had their finishes disallowed. Herb Thomas was awarded the win.
Both the Zervakis and Weatherly/Reed information were unearthed by Ken Martin, director of historical content, NASCAR Productions.
Burton spoke with Autoweek about the Hamlin/Busch incident, while Letarte’s comments were aired Monday on NASCAR Motormouths on Peacock. Here are highlights from each of those interviews:
Jeff Burton:
“The whole thing is that NASCAR and their teams worked together to create this new concept of a race car that makes better racing, and also helps to control some costs. So in order to do that, they created this process, and one of the things is, ‘Hey, if you buy these parts and pieces from the suppliers and you cannot touch them, you cannot alter them in any form or fashion.’ And for that to work, you have to enforce it. Because if you don’t enforce it, if you let it get going away and you let people start touching it, then everybody’s gonna start touching it. And now you’re right back to where you were.
Jeff Burton.
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“So there’s no choice but to make the call, there’s no choice but to make the penalty severe. We can debate and argue all day about what the penalty should be, but it has to be severe, it has to be big. It doesn’t matter what was done to it—you can’t touch it. There’s an approval process you have to go through if there has to be a repair done because of supply issues. But short of that, you can’t touch it. And everybody knows that someone was going to push it—it’s just a culture, a tolerance culture, meaning if we got 10 thousandths of an inch of tolerance, we need to find a way to get 11 (thousandths). But that’s not the game: you have a tolerance and you have a no-touch rule, and so it’s just a culture that’s got to change. Gibbs (Joe Gibbs Racing) is not cheaters. It’s just you have to change a culture based around, here’s how we’re gonna have to police this car.
“If NASCAR and the teams want the concept of this car to work, there’s no choice. No matter what NASCAR does, there’s gonna be some people that say, ‘I didn’t like that, or I do like this.’ That’s just the business they’re in. They’re never going to be in a position where everybody, all the fans, agree that’s the right thing. In this case, the owners, drivers, NASCAR, they all agreed we’re going to do it like this. And anything less would be a mistake.”Burton said NASCAR has no choice but to keep the current inspection process as-is, and if teams are found to be in violation of the rules, even if the violation comes in the season-ending championship race at Phoenix and could affect the champion and race winner, teams know the risk vs. reward element.Said Burton:
“They have to be (maintain the rules even in the championship race). Bill France (Sr.) years and years ago said that when the fans leave the racetrack, they have to know who won the race. Now we know why he said that. You have to build a system in which the owners or the teams aren’t going to get themselves into that situation (of being DQ’d). The team has to understand what an unbelievably bad look it would be for them and the sport to manipulate something that you know you can’t do. It’s one thing to get in a tolerance situation and accidentally go over it because you’re pushing too hard. This one is really not excusable.”
Cars move through the inspection line prior to a race earlier this season at Kansas Speedway
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Even though both Hamlin and Busch were safely in the playoffs, this issue raises questions. If Joe Gibbs Racing wasn’t seeking an illegal advantage, then why did it happen in the first place?
Here’s what Burton had to say:
“Teams are always working to find speed, they’re always working to be as fast as they can, they’re always working within the system in order to find pace. And teams are consistently testing NASCAR, right? They just do. This isn’t the sport it was 30 years ago. You have these massive companies that have these processes, and you have these specialists, and you have who knows who made the decision to do that (put the tape on Hamlin’s and Busch’s cars)?
You don’t know for a fact that even the crew chief knew that happened. You don’t know who did it, but they do internally. They’re not going to share that with us, nor should they. But there was a time where the crew chief made every decision. Well, that’s not the case anymore. Playing the hypothetical, someone could have made a decision that didn’t quite understand the magnitude of this decision. Because you could get in your own bubble and not really understand what’s going on out there in the world, how big this could be. So that’s why I say it’s a culture change. Right now, every team is going back and having a conversation with all of the people, all of the targets, everything that it takes to make this work and saying, ‘Okay, here’s what happened. Ears wide open, be paying attention, these are the ramifications.’ And that is what will be required.”
Lastly, Autoweek asked Burton whether NASCAR has come down so hard with penalties this year, including Hamlin and Busch, Brad Keselowski and earlier this week the No. 34 team of Michael McDowell, to possibly set an example to other teams that may consider trying to circumvent the rules.
Live on EBay. 1 tainted trophy and 1 used bottle of champagne pic.twitter.com/kfZn6C877o
— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) July 26, 2022
Burton replied:
“They weren’t penalized to make an example of them, but they are (an example of what can happen). NASCAR didn’t just randomly say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna penalize these guys so that we get everybody’s attention.’ The teams made a decision that got them penalized, and NASCAR has to make the call. Even to McDowell’s situation, he’s probably not going to win the race at Pocono. He doesn’t drive for a team that has the funding, he doesn’t drive for a team that typically is in contention to win a race at Pocono. You’ve got to have their attention too. That’s why they got caught. They just happened to be a random (car sent back to the NASCAR Research and Development Center for a complete post-race teardown). They went back to the R&D Center, where a car gets completely torn apart.”
STEVE LETARTE
(On NASCAR America Motormouths on Peacock):
When asked about the Hamlin/Busch penalty, Letarte, reading from the NASCAR rule book, said, “You cannot install any additional parts, modifications to existing parts, to affect the aerodynamic properties of the vehicle.” Letarte then added, “In my opinion, as silly as it may sound, it’s just a piece of tape—but if you’re not allowed to do anything, a piece of tape is something, especially underneath the vinyl, I don’t have a real issue (with the DQs).”
Former NASCAR crew chief Steve Letarte is currently works for NBC as a NASCAR analyst.
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When asked whether the Hamlin/Busch penalty was more egregious than other penalties in NASCAR history, Letarte harkened back to the last time a race winner was DQ’d, which was back in 1960: “If you look at the last 62 years of NASCAR, this infraction would be a minor infraction. But if I look at the last five or six months of NASCAR and the Next Gen vehicle, how it is created, how there are these single-sourced parts, in my mind, over the last 62 years, this is not a blip on the radar. But if I zoom into this season, it’s a major blip on the radar and an intersection for NASCAR and that’s why the penalty was what it was.”
What does taking a win away today mean? Letarte replied, “A win is more valuable than it has ever been. That’s not to discount any wins in the past. But the system, the points, the playoffs, the buckets that get filled up even knowing how sponsorships and manufacturers work now… those trophies are way different than second.”
Will the penalties to Busch/Hamlin, McDowell, and Keselowski make crew chiefs think more about pushing the envelope? Letarte replied, “If I’m still a crew chief, I am still looking for every advantage. But now I know where I have to look. If I have to have this piece, but I can mount it any way I so choose, then we need to be smarter. I can’t change the piece. ‘But what if I bend it?’ You can’t bend it. You need to disseminate it through your people that have worked on the old cars. ‘Don’t even think about it. Don’t even test to see if it’s better. We don’t want to know if it’s better.’ It’s a development process that has to change.”
Keyword: Jeff Burton: Why NASCAR Penalty 'Has to Be Severe' for Next Gen Infractions