Violations at Atlanta leads to $1,000.00 fines

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bowtie

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Nascar fined crew chiefs James Ince and Mike Ford $1,000,00 each Wenesday for violations at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Ince, crew chief for Johnny Benson, was fined for unapproved fuel filler check valve assembly during Sunday's race.

Ford, crew chief for Bill Elliott, was fined for altering the car on pit road after the car had passed template inspection.

http://www.thatsracin.com/mld/thatsracin/5374525.htm
 
Woulda been big, big news if the 24 team would've done those things. ;)
 
Originally posted by bowtie@Mar 12 2003, 01:02 PM
Ford, crew chief for Bill Elliott, was fined for altering the car on pit road after the car had passed template inspection.
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What exactly does that mean? Cause to me that seems pretty vague.
 
Originally posted by DeeDee+Mar 12 2003, 06:07 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (DeeDee @ Mar 12 2003, 06:07 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--bowtie@Mar 12 2003, 01:02 PM
Ford, crew chief for Bill Elliott, was fined for altering the car on pit road after the car had passed template inspection.
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What exactly does that mean? Cause to me that seems pretty vague. [/b][/quote]
yea it does sound vauge.

i guess i might start a war here but it seems to me if a crew cheif "alters" a car after it has been through inspection there should be more than a $1000.00 fine. I don't care who it is the 24,8,9,88,14,36 whoever, sounds to me like they were acutally trying to do something they knew wouldn't pass inspection. in other words they were cheatin. where is the points loss everybody was getting last year.
 
exactly what I was thinking deedee but we will probably never know exactly what that means.
 
Altering the car on pit road could mean any number of things. I can think of about 50 things to do without breaking a sweat. Since template inspection is mentioned, it can likely be assumed that it had to do with the body of the car or its height. Hell, make that a 100 things.


Now of those things not all them are necessarily illegal nor do they have to be for the fine to be levied. It does not specify which day this was could have been qualifying day or race day, so I'll give ya a for instance.

After template inspection as the crew pushes the car towards the grid someone might notice that a fender is rubbing a tire when its turned a certain way. He reaches down and pulls that fender out, that is an alteration which may or may not conform to the template. They may have decided to change the angle of the rear spoiler because they felt the track had either loosened or tightened and NASCAR might consider that an alteration, don't know for sure. For the same reason they may have decided to pull one of the fenders out more to increase or decrease front downforce, again this can be legal or illegal depending on far it is out, but it is an alteration. They could have changed brake duct arrangement, or anyof the other duct openings for that matter and the deal is the same.

It might have been a purposely illegal move as those are common as well. Tems have been known to take a pair of pliers and bend little air wickers in to leading edges of wheel openings, it helps the airflow allegedly. I'm sure there are numerous others.

Unless someone on the #9 team decides to say something we'll probably never know exactly what they did. There are too many possibilities to make any valid assumption until they do.
 
Well did they actually run the race with the modifications that were made on pit road? If they did how does NASCAR know the modification didn't happen during the race? If NASCAR caught them before they started the race then the modifications didn't affect Bill's performance, so maybe that's why the fine is so low.

Look at how many teams pull out fenders during a race but you never hear anything about it. Doesn't that affect their handling?
 
I would guess the alteration occured and NASCAR saw it before the car made the track. Somehow I have feeling it was before qualifying, no reason, just a feeling.

I do not know for sure what you can and cannot do following inspection, pulling out the fenders may be acceptable or not, it was just an example of an alteration that could be done and not be illegal in and of itself.

The amount of the fine of leads me to believe it was more of an "ooops" or very minor type deal than an intention to cheat. NASCAR' despite its critics cries, has been pretty consistent in fines over the last year or so. If something becomes a problem they usually have made it clear that penalty escalations will follow and then done exactly that.
 
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