NASCAR Eager to Throw Book at Cheaters

July 6, 2007— -- Like grease under fingernails, bending the rules has been a part of NASCAR since its inception nearly 60 years ago.

"If you ain't cheatin,' you ain't tryin' " has been something of a mantra for racing teams in a sport spawned from the outlaw culture of the Prohibition era, when rum-running moonshiners, racing the same hot rods they used to outrun federal agents, squared off on dirt tracks across the South for bragging rights and a few bucks.

But now NASCAR -- having morphed from a bootleggers' playground into a business empire with billion-dollar TV contracts and Fortune 500 sponsors — is making a controversial turn away from its anything-goes past. It's giving unprecedented scrutiny and penalties to race teams that go beyond the rules to make their cars faster.

This year eight teams' crew chiefs have been suspended, including those of the Hendrick Motorsports teams of Nextel Cup leader Jeff Gordon and defending series champion Jimmie Johnson. The crew chiefs, Chad Knaus (Johnson) and Steve Letarte (Gordon), also were fined a record-tying $100,000 each and the drivers were docked 100 series points apiece for violations during qualifying at Infineon Raceway last month in Sonoma, Calif.

Robbie Reiser, crew chief for 2003 champion Matt Kenseth, was one of five crew chiefs suspended for violations before the season-opening Daytona 500, kicking off a NASCAR crackdown on devious shortcuts -- from taping over holes in wheel wells to flaring out fenders a few extra inches. Such moves to improve a car's aerodynamics once were celebrated as garage creativity but now are viewed as something like "attempted murder," as Kenseth put it.

At the midpoint of the 36-race season, NASCAR has suspended crew chiefs for a total of 42 races; at the same point last year, crew chiefs had been suspended for a total of eight races.

As the Cup series returns to Daytona International Speedway for Saturday night's Pepsi 400, the stiffer punishments have been welcomed by some but viewed warily by traditionalists who don't want creativity curtailed.

"This has been a game of, 'What is NASCAR going to let you get by with?' and it's no longer that game," says Jeff Burton, who has won 19 races in NASCAR's top series. "There is nothing they want you to do with these (cars). There is no wiggle room."

Old attitudes die hard in the garage, where cheating has long been seen as an art form. Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president of competition, concedes, "It's difficult to change any culture." But NASCAR plans to wield a heavy stick and reshape mind-sets in the name of integrity, cost containment and improved competition.

NASCAR chairman Brian France says, "The premise is not being able to fudge much with the car.

"We want the ability of the drivers to be the focus, not who has the latest gizmo," says France, who warns that NASCAR won't stop short of suspending drivers to make its point. "We're not about that."

For the old guard, race crews' constant search for competitive advantages has been at the core of NASCAR's success.

"I don't want to lose that creativity of a guy being able to set up a car the way he wants," says Fox Sports racing analyst and three-time NASCAR champion Darrell Waltrip, 60. "I don't like being looked at over my shoulder all the time. You can't nitpick every piece of that race car every week."

"I don't think I'd have a car today" in NASCAR, says David Pearson, 72, second on the all-time win list to Richard Petty. "I'd be so mad, because the rules are ridiculous."

Many NASCAR veterans say the crackdown stifles ingenuity.

"I'm glad I'm not a crew chief anymore," says Robbie Loomis, director of competition for Petty Enterprises. "From the time you start racing, it's all about working and finding an advantage. They've drawn such a tight box around (the car), it kind of changes the process for all of our mind-sets. Before, you were looking in that 'gray' area."

It's not just old-timers who are concerned.

"Seven days a week, teams engage in trying to make the cars the best they can within rules specifications," says Geoff Smith, president of Roush Fenway Racing. "That's the historical competition that occurs in the garage and is celebrated by every single person who works on a car in this garage.

"Until the rules are written with such exactitude that there can be no room for error or interpretation, then everybody is going to try to go to the edge of the performance envelope."

Breaking rules part of lore

Junior Johnson, legendary for his ability to milk the maximum out of his equipment as a driver and owner, served 11 months in an Ohio prison in the late 1950s after being convicted of moonshining.

In NASCAR, Johnson, who is not related to driver Jimmie Johnson, made an art of finding ways to make his cars go faster that were on the fringe of the racing association's rules, using tricks such as bigger engines, slanted windshields and hydraulics that could raise and lower his cars.

"A lot of stuff I did -- they didn't have rules against it," Johnson says. "There was a lot of room to do what I did to win a race. I did my stuff and left it up to other people to catch up. If they could do it and win, then more power to them. It was all fair game for me."

Cheating in NASCAR takes various forms. It sometimes begins for young drivers when they lie about their age to get behind the wheel.

For years, teams have been accused of hiding extra fuel in larger gas tanks and making illegal adjustments to air-intake manifolds and carburetor restrictor plates to generate more horsepower.

In the first race of the Strictly Stock Series -- the circuit that became today's Nextel Cup -- on June 19, 1949, in Charlotte, winner Glenn Dunnaway was disqualified from a $2,000 first prize. His 1947 Ford Coupe was illicitly equipped with "bootlegger's springs" that improved the car's handling.

But for generations, cheating in NASCAR has been about more than just skirting rules that concern a car's aerodynamics, horsepower, handling and fuel capacity.

Drivers have been guilty of everything from spinning opponents to tossing items from their window to draw a yellow caution flag for debris on the track. A yellow flag forces cars to slow down and gives those drivers trailing the leaders a chance to close the gap.

In the days when fans could tell a Ford from an Oldsmobile from a Plymouth, there also was a different code in the garage area.

"If you knew someone was cheating," Pearson says, "you wouldn't tell on 'em. You'd just do it yourself."

Driver Bobby Allison won the 1982 Daytona 500 in part because his car ran faster after its rear bumper fell off from a slight tap. That drew howls from competitors who thought Allison's crew had rigged the bumper to fall off easily so his car would be lighter.

Smokey Yunick, a famed mechanic and engine builder, referred to working outside NASCAR's rules as "innovation." For a race in the late 1960s, Yunick put an 11-foot gas line in his car to increase its fuel capacity. At the next race, NASCAR banned Yunick's innovation.

Some teams have gone to great lengths to hollow out bolts to gain the slightest weight advantage.

Years ago, before NASCAR introduced templates to check body shapes, teams would alter rooflines or deck lids to create a spoiler effect for better aerodynamics.

Yunick once raced a car in the late 1960s roughly fifteen-sixteenths the size of a legitimate stock car, making it lighter and quicker. This too was outlawed.

"All of us were probably cheating a little," Pearson says. "Smokey Yunick used to say that if you cheat on 10 things and they make you fix only two or three, then you've done something."

In today's game, Yunick's scaled-down vehicle wouldn't stand a chance of getting into a race.

NASCAR has instituted rigid guidelines with a 180-page rule book enforced by 50 to 65 officials for Nextel Cup races.

"We used to come in here with 60 cars, and there'd be five or six inspectors," says Dale Inman, a crew chief for eight Cup titles. "Now you can't even look over your shoulder and not see an inspector."

No leeway on 'Car of Tomorrow'

Recently, NASCAR's emphasis has shifted to what it calls the "Car of Tomorrow," which is making its debut in 16 Cup races in 2007 before a full-time rollout next season.

The bigger, boxier model is intended to enhance safety and competition while reducing costs for teams. NASCAR's goal is greater parity and promoting the side-by-side racing its executives believe will increase excitement among fans and boost TV ratings.

Cynics might wonder whether it was coincidence that Hendrick cars, which have won five of the eight Car of Tomorrow races, were singled out for violations at Infineon with drivers Gordon and Johnson.

Their crew chiefs, Knaus and Letarte, had authorized 1-inch alterations to a 10-inch area of the front fenders between the hood and wheel-well opening -- a change that has been fair game with the previous model.

"I'm not saying we're being made an example (of), but they definitely sent a message," says Doug Duchardt, Hendrick's vice president of development.

The directive sent through the rigidly designed Car of Tomorrow is that areas once open for interpretation now are black and white. Teams now face suspensions and drastic points penalties for being even one-eighth of an inch beyond specifications governing the shape of cars' sheet metal, for example.

"The perfect rule book doesn't have a lot of gray area in it," says John Darby, NASCAR's Nextel Cup director. "Gray area is another phrase for 'your personal interpretation of the rules.' … I don't know if we've got every bit of it erased. I'm pretty comfortable we've got 99% of it."

Knaus, who works side-by-side with Gordon's crew chief, Letarte, had been suspended before this year's run-in with NASCAR inspectors. NASCAR benched Knaus for the first four races last season after finding a device that raised the height of the rear window of Johnson's car for qualifying, deflecting air and increasing speed.

But the Hendrick team was stunned at the severity of penalties levied this year. Reiser says his team was headed in a direction similar to Hendrick before the incidents at Infineon.

"They've never dealt in a no-tolerance situation before," Waltrip says. "So teams are saying, 'I can make that better and this better.' And NASCAR is saying, 'Not anymore,' because they know if you give these guys an inch, they end up taking the whole yardstick.

"The thing I hate is it makes all these teams look bad. I hate people talking about all our guys as cheaters. I think (NASCAR) is a little bit ambitious right now. You can make a point without putting these teams in this position."

Because Gordon and Johnson rank high in the driver standings, the points penalties don't hurt Hendrick as much as lower-ranked teams. But France says he can't "customize penalties because Gordon has a big points lead. We have to be somewhat consistent although escalating them."

Driver suspensions may be next

In the old days, circumventing NASCAR's rules created folk heroes out of men such as Junior Johnson, the subject of an Esquire story, The Last American Hero, by Tom Wolfe that became a 1973 movie starring Jeff Bridges.

"I don't hide what I did," Johnson says. "I did it to get an advantage. You might come up with the best mojo to win a race, and you should be allowed to keep it. I kind of feel sorry for guys (such as Knaus and Letarte) because they worked their butts off. But I understand NASCAR's side of it. If you break the rules, you've got to pay. But if it's an iffy (rule), I think they go way too far with (penalizing) it."

There are questions about whether the crew chief suspensions are stiff enough. Last week at New Hampshire International Speedway, three of the top five finishers (Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Johnson) had interim crew chiefs, and Johnson won two of his four races without Knaus last year. Suspended crew chiefs can spend time in their teams' shops during the week and can communicate with them via telephone or text message during races.

NASCAR is taking steps to put more teeth in its crew chief suspensions. Thursday it threatened additional penalties for those who violate the spirit of the rule by attending races without entering the garage. (Both Hendrick chiefs and Tony Eury Jr., Earnhardt's chief, did this last week at New Hampshire International Speedway.)

"Despite what we fine them, these are good teams that get through any kind of adversity to a point," France says.

Pearson believes that if NASCAR "really wanted to stop (cheating), they'd make the driver stay home for two or three races."

Even though drivers are the stars of NASCAR, France says that option is on the table. "That's sort of a death penalty," he says. "We prefer to get there other ways. Ultimately we'll prevail, because it's the integrity of our product. You have to make sure there's a high degree of confidence that whoever won the race did it fair and square."

Contributing: Gary Graves in Loudon, N.H., and A.J. Perez in Daytona Beach, Fla.