From the June, 2007 issue of Stock Car Insider
What's in Store for Hendrick?
The big story this week in NASCAR will be what penalties NASCAR decides to hand out to Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson's teams. Both drivers' cars were found to have front fenders that were out of spec. Or were they?That's the main point of contention the Hendrick owned teams have voiced since NASCAR first inspected the cars. In NASCAR inspection, templates are placed over the body of the car at key locations. To pass the body inspection, the car has to match the template. With the old body style, prior to the COT, teams were allowed to manipulate the fenders between the template locations, and this is what the crew chiefs of both the 24 & 48 cars claimed they did.
With the Car of Tomorrow, NASCAR has decided to clamp down on fender manipulation. But as usual with NASCAR, they prefer to ad as much ambiguity into the mix as possible. As opposed to coming out and saying very clearly that the fenders cannot be manipulated between the template points, they would prefer to make an example out of team fighting for every competitive advantage that they can get.
For the sake of all Cup teams, NASCAR needs to write a clearly defined set of rules for the new Cars of Tomorrow. After all, it took seven years for NASCAR to develop the COT; one would think they would already have an idea as to what should be legal versus illegal by now.
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