Wallace’s Nationwide team wins Daytona penalty appeal
Quote selected text Published March 3rd, 2008 in NASCAR News
Rusty Wallace said Tuesday that the No. 64 Chevrolet Nationwide Series team he owns won its appeal to National Stock Car Racing Commission for a penalty issued at Daytona.
The commission reinstated the 25 owner points, David Stremme’s 25 driver points and the $15,000 fine. It also reinstated crew chief Steve Darne, who was given a six-race suspension from NASCAR. But Wallace said Darne has left the team for reasons unrelated to the Daytona incident.
Wallace’s team was one of five at Daytona that had an unsecured oil reservoir lid. A similar problem came up in the postrace inspection for Carl Edwards and the No. 99 Ford team after its victory in the Sprint Cup race at Las Vegas Sunday, but Wallace said Edwards’ situation is different.
The lid on the No. 99 car was off. The one of Wallace’s Nationwide was unsecured.
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So what about the other 4 teams ?? will they get the penalties removed as well…
That would depend on if the lid was off or not secured right.
test.I am wondering why my reply came up as “Bob”!!!
tampabbay99
Well that’s interesting.
Hmmm ….”Off” and “unsecured”. That’s making shades of gray now isn’t it. LOL
I don’t really think thats making shades of gray. Off is off, unsecured is on, but not tight.
And to the people who reply and it comes up with somebody else’s name, the easy way to avoid that is to register.
I agree w/ Fisha. Off is not attached at all, unsecured is attached, but not screwed on tightly.
Either way, though, the fact is it was against the rules and could possibly have been a competitive advantage. It’s very suspicious to me that all these teams suddenly have problems with this specific part and I don’t remember anyone ever having a problem with it in the past…..
There have been problems with it in the past, but I think this is the first time that so many teams have been caught with it in a small timeframe.
Depends if they appealed.. if they didn’t.. they are wishing they did
does anybody else think that there may be a malfunction with the lid itself? im just wondering with so many teams having this problem or is everyone getting caught at once lol. Futher more what would removing hte cap do for the car? im just wondering, what does everyone think?
I doubt it was a malfunction with all of them, maybe a purpose made malfunction, but not an accidental one.
As far as what it does, it helps evacuate air from under the car. The oil tank which is behind the seat sits in a box, that box has a lid on it because the oil lines run from the tank (inside the car) to the underside of the car and then to the engine, so without the lid on that box, air can come up through the openings for the line (heck entire bottom of box might be open I’m not sure) but anyway air comes up through the box from under the car and with the lid off it’ll help the car some because there would not be the air under the car creating lift/drag.
Howie might be able to explain maybe even show us with a pic of how exactly it is set up on the Cup/Nationwide cars, but what I said is a pretty good description based off what I have seen/read/heard in the past.
thanks for the info buddy, the question of what taking hte cap off would do for the car has been bothering me and my buddies all day.
Just like anything else in the car that will allow Down Force. Take it off or loosen the Bolts.
A show was done on this exact lid not long ago and it was stated that a car that had the lip loosened or taken off, would allow the Car to have such Down force that it would Drive like it was stuck to the Track.
So go Figure why the 99, Edwards car was so good. I think the Win should be taken away in the future and these things will STOP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mel wrote:
Mel, Edwards car was good because, it’s an Edwards kind of track. The penalized part really wouldn’t offer a performance-enhancement of any kind. It had to do with the oil tank reservoir cover not being fastened securely, it’s nowhere near an aero-enhancement. He’ll be good again this weekend at Atlanta (three-in-a-row isn’t an out-there prediction). Take away the win!?! HA!! The penalized part here has no remote correlation to such a severe penalty, if he’s good, he’s good and people just have to deal with it. Also, your saying that Edwards should be made the example for a penalty that’s no where even in the nieghborhood to being as bad as others in years past, to top it off you didn’t even know what the penalty was. Hopefully NASCAR will not maintain the penalty, Edwards may have been rough around the edges at a few points last year, but I can say this, he IS NOT a cheater. No one should cheapen his ability or character with excuses, he’s just a great race-car driver!!