So the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing team received a penalty this week after its car failed postrace inspection -- and quite honestly it was necessary.
It wasn’t intentional on the team’s part, but the rules are the rules and they got busted. I’ve talked a lot to folks that have worked and do work for Coach Joe Gibbs. He doesn’t tolerate any monkey business when it comes to flirting with the ragged edge of the rules.
Gibbs knows that to be competitive you want to get as close as possible to the edge, but he doesn’t condone stepping over that edge. So I believe crew chief Dave Rogers when he says there was a part failure that allowed the car to be a 16th of an inch too low. Again though, the way the rules are written -– guilty is guilty. NASCAR has been very clear that unless you were involved with some type of wreck that affected the frame, then it is what it is. Intentional or unintentional has no bearing in the decision to penalize.
Now folks might want to pile on Kyle Busch about this, but he has absolutely nothing to do with a part failure after a long race on a rough track at Pocono.
The six-point penalty is part of the new points system. It's based off percentages so it is in line with the way the old system was. The monetary fine is exactly in line with what it has always been. So this is all right dead in line with the old system and that’s exactly what NASCAR had intended it to be.
That said, this is another negative headline. And he's gotten a lot of those lately.
Busch doesn’t need to change his driving style, he just has to race smart. He just doesn’t need to take it to the limit right now because I just don’t think he can stand any more bad press. I really believe that Kyle is somewhat of a marked man. Everybody is sitting and waiting to see what the next situation with him will be.
Will it be something that happens on-track or away from the track? Will it be racing-related or something in his personal life. I would wager if you went and asked Kyle, he’d tell you this really wasn’t the kind of attention he was wanting.
Trust me, he isn’t the type of guy to run from the attention, but some of this stuff raises the annoyance levels to new heights. What that does is take you off the focus of your game. That’s probably the uphill battle that team is facing right now.
After his teammate, Denny Hamlin, called out Richard Childress Racing last year during the Chase when Clint Bowyer was penalized, you have to believe that the RCR camp will have no problems throwing a few rocks at the Joe Gibbs camp now that the No. 18 has been penalized.
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