At the Sears Point race, NASCAR suspended a couple of Hendrick Motorsports crew chiefs for 6 races. So at last weekend’s race at New Hampshire, how did Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson perform?<\/p>\n
Gordon qualified 8th and finished 2nd.\u00a0 Johnson was worse off: he qualified 10th and finished 5th.<\/p>\n
Those penalties sure did have an effect on the teams, didn’t they? And if I heard right on the little bit of pre-race coverage I watched, at least one of the suspended crew chiefs was actually at the track.<\/em> NASCAR says they are only prohibited from areas where you need a NASCAR hard card, plus they can’t talk on the team’s radio. Hello? The series sponsor is a cell phone company! They don’t have cell phones in the pits? Come on.<\/p>\n Suspension should be suspension. They’ve escorted other suspended individuals off track property before, so I’m not sure why it’s ok for a suspended crew chief to hang out in the team’s motor coach.<\/p>\n Now NASCAR is making noises that they may start suspending other team members as well if the cheating doesn’t stop.\u00a0 It’s really simple for NASCAR to get a team’s attention: all they have to do is suspend the owner, the driver, and the car for the weekend of the race that they’re caught cheating in. Doesn’t need to be a multi-week suspension (unless the team is really dense about getting the message; one could argue that the #48 team meets that criteria). How many missed races would it take before the sponsor wants some of their money back? That’d beat a measly $100,000 fine anytime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the Sears Point race, NASCAR suspended a couple of Hendrick Motorsports crew chiefs for 6 races. So at last weekend’s race at New Hampshire, how did Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson perform? Gordon qualified 8th and finished 2nd.\u00a0 Johnson was worse off: he qualified 10th and finished 5th. Those penalties sure did have an … <\/p>\n