(Originally posted on WordPress, September 2017)
This week's edition of the Monster Energy Nascar Cup Series playoffs is brought to you by the letter "E" for "encumbered."
Just when it appeared that Chase Elliott's stage two win and ultimate runner-up finish at Chicagoland Speedway were going to propel him one step closer to advancement in the championship standings, "BOOM!" The dreaded removal of tape from the spoiler of his #24 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet was caught on camera, and down fell the golden hammer. The result? His second-place finish was declared encumbered, costing him the playoff point that he earned for winning stage two, along with hefty fines and suspensions levied on both his car chief and crew chief, and a subsequent relegation to eight place in the postseason point standings. Looking ahead to the coming weekend at Loudon, he and the team now have some serious ground to make up if his hopes for advancement to the next stage are to remain intact. Moral of the story? The rules are the rules, and the watchful eyes of Nascar "will" catch and deal with cheating in any form.
Just call it valuable experience. Which brings to mind the question: How much should a driver be held responsible for poor and irresponsible decision-making on the part of his or her crew? After all, it could legitimately be argued that it was a crew member and not Chase himself who was ultimately responsible for putting that piece of tape on the spoiler--either prior to the start of the race (where it should have been promptly discovered during the pre-race inspection process) or during the course of a pit stop. I have personally sought the answer to this question many times in the past, but in the end that answer has always been the same: Behind every finish, be it successful or unsuccessful, lies a full team effort involving both crew members and drivers, with everyone sharing the responsibility for all decisions and subsequent actions duly affecting the outcome. Whether or not the drivers are consulted via in-race communication with regard to these actions, is yet to be proven, but Nascar, in all fairness, is ultimately faced with the responsibility of assuming that such "pit strategies" were indeed discussed and approved, and thus to act in accordance with such assumptions. Fair? That's questionable depending on the individual circumstances and conditions, but the bottom line is that the rules are the rules, and when they are broken, either with or without the knowledge of the drivers themselves, the violations must be dealt with, and in the aftermath of everything, all that a driver can do is simply chalk the disappointment up as a learning experience, and find within the negatives something positive that will be of benefit in future situations.
So just what effect will this unfortunate turn of events have upon the remaining two races before driver eliminations come into play? In all honesty, probably not very much. The sad fact of the matter is that cheating in some form or another has always been prevalent in the sport, and is not likely to go away simply because of the degree of severity with which Nascar has chosen to handle individual rule book violations. In the now famous words of Jimmie Johnson's crew chief Chad Knaus, who could arguably be nicknamed the King Of Rulebook Modifications, "It's our job to cheat. It's Nascar's job to catch us." And much as your writer hates to admit it, Mr. Knaus has a valid point. Teams are always looking for ways by which a driver stands to gain an advantage during the ultimate pursuit of a victory, and the practice is not likely to stop just because one team's "experimentation" for lack of a better word, has been discovered. Except, of course, when the "discovery" involves their particular team. To that end, one can ultimately hope that the next serious infraction to make news within the sport, will be one committed by another competitor, thus giving "the other guys" something to think about before making poor strategy decisions of their own in future races.
Lesson learned? We can only hope.
On to New Hampshire.
–Lisa Ballantyne, Totally Nascar Talk
All views herein are my own. Readers' comments are always welcome.
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