And I'm sure all of the Hendrick cars were juuuuust fine!



H, Fla. -- Thirty-one cars, including 16 in the Sprint Cup Series, failed inspection before Thursday's practices at Daytona International Speedway.
NASCAR confiscated the teams' roof flaps, which are designed to keep cars on the ground during spins and wrecks at high speeds, for further inspection. Penalties could be possible.
The cars involved included all three Joe Gibbs Racing entries (Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth), all three Roush Fenway Racing entries (Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.), all three Michael Waltrip Racing entries (Clint Bowyer, Martin Truex Jr. and Michael Waltrip) and both Roger Penske Racing entries (Joey Logano and defending series champion Brad Keselowski). Cars driven by Jamie McMurray, Trevor Bayne, Casey Mears, Marcos Ambrose and Aric Almirola also failed inspection.
The roof-flap spacers had been illegally machined down to reduce weight.
NASCAR inspectors made those Cup teams install new, unaltered roof flaps before drivers were allowed on the track for the first of two practices.
Inspectors then went to the Nationwide garage and found similar issues on 15 cars.
"When you find something in one garage, you communicate to the other garage," NASCAR spokesman Kerry Tharp said. "We looked into it and this is what we found."
Nationwide drivers facing possible penalties include Bayne, Brian Vickers, Reed Sorenson and Travis Pastrana.

 

I am sure not much speed would be gained by having lighter roof flap spacers. With so many teams using the lighter spacers, the spacer manufacturer must be selling thinner versions that the penalized teams thought was okay.

 

More than likely the rules did not clearly prohibit this modification. NASCAR is killing itself with some of its own policies. The downturn in attendance is not all due to a downturn in the economy.

 

NASCAR is worse than the EPA and the IRS combined recently.

Why don't they just supply the cars and say here go race.

 

Apparently the rules say no unapproved mods to safety related parts and that's what the roof flaps are.

 

Indeed, shaving down a roof flaps spacers could lead to the roof flaps leaving the vehicle when it shouldn't. This could cause a car to flip, or another car to be hit by the roof flap, or worse case, wind up in the stands. And it's just so LITTLE a weight savings, to do it makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, a good BM by the driver will likely generate as much lightness adding as that shaving bit did.



You're shaving THESE DOWN TO SAVE WEIGHT?! Really guys? Incredibly stupid. Way to go.

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Further investigation indicates they aren't shaved to save weight, but to change the aerodynamic profile of the flaps to cause a change in how the rear spoilers work. That's... amazing. Still stupid. And shows that the Chevys are that much better if the non-Chevys are even RESORTING to this stupidness.

/But for the records, as to whether the Chevy teams are clean, I have no comment.