John Middlebrook and NASCAR clearly
do not see eye-to-eye.
In recent seasons, the National Stock Car Racing Chief Appellate Officer has
consistently reduced the severity of NASCAR sanctions on appeal. He has
softened the blow for Richard Childress Racing, Hendrick Motorsports and Penske
Racing in the last 12 months, and may get an opportunity to do the same for Joe
Gibbs Racing today, pending the outcome of an Appeals Hearing in Concord, NC.
Why is Middlebrook
so insistent on letting teams down easy?
It's simple. He and NASCAR have
different goals.
As the sport’s final court
of appeal, Middlebrook is concerned primarily with fairness. His goal is to deal
with offending teams in a balanced, even-handed manner; balancing punition with
compassion. NASCAR, meanwhile, is focused almost entirely on deterrence.
Middlebrook doesn’t care if
teams continue to bend the rules. He is not the one examining dozens of race
cars with a fine-tooth comb -- multiple times each weekend -- and he surely loses
no sleep trying to anticipate the latest “gray area” innovation from the
creative minds employed at Hendrick, Childress or Gibbs. He has never rolled
around on a creeper in a sweltering hot Sprint Cup garage while trying to
detect a single oblong mounting hole, and he has surely never experienced the job
of counting the threads on lug nuts, one after another. He also is not subjected to intense questioning from media, competitors and fans in the aftermath of each ruling, the way NASCAR is.
The sanctioning body, however, is all
about deterrence and precedent. If fining a crew chief $200,000 this week makes his colleagues
second-guess a similarly creative interpretation of the rules next week, that’s
“mission accomplished” from the sanctioning body’s point of view. Vice president for competition Robin Pemberton said years ago that NASCAR
would increase penalties until the violations ceased, and on that count, he
has been as good as his word.
Middlebrook’s decision to trim the suspensions handed down to Penske
Racing’s team manager, crew chiefs, car chiefs and engineers yesterday allows the team to claim at least a partial victory. It does
nothing, however, to soften the message sent by NASCAR to its teams.
“Keep messing with this Gen-6 race car, and we’ll make
you pay,” they said. “We’ll fine you and dock you championship points. We’ll
also give you a multi-week `time out’ to think about what you’ve done.”
Only time will tell whether or not that message has been
received. The smart money, however, says teams are through tinkering with
moveable rear ends, in the aftermath of the Penske sanctions.
NASCAR has apparently done its job, and Middlebrook has done his.
No way will teams be deterred from "cheating." They're ahead of NASCAR in the technology arms race and they know it, plus Middlebrook's goal of fairness, right or wrong, has the effect of enabling teams to press on.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing. Last year, nascar set hard limits on how far the rear ends could shift. HMS and some others then went and installed trick bushings to exceed that limit and trick the inspectors into thinking all was good. When nascar found out some were breaking the limit rule, they never cited 'spirit of the rule'. Instead, they made a new rule adjusting the max rear shift to allow the use of those trick bushings.......which were clearly designed to cheat the inspection process, with clear intent to gain an advantage.
ReplyDeleteI heard that this is one of the issues Penske cited. Last year nascar set hard rules, then failed to punish those when went beyond those limits because they had followed the letter of the rule, completely ignoring the spirit of those rules.
I'm happy Middlebrook was more consistant than nascar. It seems the only thing Penske did wrong was they failed to submit a full rear assembly that wasn't attached to the car.