Cheating In NASCAR Is Not Like Cheating In Other Sports
Every sport deals with athletes and teams pushing the boundaries. When someone pushes too far there are rules and guidelines in place to discipline them and put them back on the right side of the line. NASCAR is both the same and different in that respect.
Last season Don Coble published a story on The St. Augustine Record in which he bashed NASCAR for being okay with drivers and teams cheating, assuming they were the winners of the race. In the piece Coble references Kyle Busch and his issues at Kansas last season as well as a handful of other times NASCAR has had winners fail post-race inspection.
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Keeping with Kyle Busch and Kansas for a moment. It’s only fair to point out that Coble clearly didn’t understand what happened in this situation. According to Coble, Busch “had several loose lug nuts” which is why he received the P3 violation that NASCAR handed down. Let’s remember that there are only five on the tire, a couple of loose lugs would be two, a few would be three, so several is at least four? Additionally, there is a big difference in not hitting all of the lugs (missing one) and having “several” that are loose.
However, I digress.
Coble is upset that Busch was allowed to keep his win despite cheating. Coble went onto reference other drivers like Richard Petty (his 199th win), Clint Bowyer (2010 in New Hampshire), Jimmie Johnson (2005 in Las Vegas) and Mark Martin (1990 in Richmond) who also were allowed to keep their wins after failing post-race inspection.
The biggest component at play here with NASCAR is that it’s difficult to draw the line between cheating and something just being off. Sure, it’s easy to say the No. 18 team missed a lug nut in Kansas on purpose to have a faster pit stop. Then again, it’s also easy to say the tire changer was in a rush (trying to produce a quick stop) and missed the lug nut by mistake, or maybe he actually thought he got it tight. When it comes to different parts being off by 1/100th of an inch, is that cheating or an inaccurate measurement?
It’s quite the task to ask NASCAR to declare everyone who fails inspection to be deemed a cheater. Do some teams push boundaries on purpose? Sure, they absolutely do. However, pushing boundaries is different than putting a rocket booster in you car and hoping that nobody will notice. Pushing boundaries is a lot different than cheating and that’s why it’s difficult to start taking away wins.
Moreover, when a driver fails post-race inspection it’s not discovered until after the race is over. That means the win has happened, the team and driver have celebrated, the sponsors have been thanked, the photos have been taken, the trophy has been awarded.
What is supposed to happen next?
Should that winner then be stripped of the win and the win should go to the driver who finished in second? Should the second-place driver then be paraded back onto the track so that they can celebrate the win? Wins are not easy to come by in NASCAR, what if the new winner is a driver who doesn’t win a lot or it’s their first win? Don’t they deserve to have the same moment if they are going to be crowned as the winner?
To avoid this circus, NASCAR takes the next best approach and that is in the form of punishments. If NASCAR believes that you truly cheated, they tend to punish accordingly. If NASCAR believes you’re playing with a rule that they are serious about (lug nut rule), they punish with the intent to send a message. Most of the time the punishments come with the loss of points (which is like having a win taken away when it comes to the standings) or the suspension of crew chiefs and pit crew members. Some penalties include both of those and fines.
At the end of the day it’s also important to remember that NASCAR is not like other sports. Missing a lug nut it not the same as taking PED’s in football or baseball. A car being a fraction of an inch too low is not the same as corking a bat or deflating footballs. NASCAR is an environment where things like this happen because teams are allowed to constantly work on and tinker with their equipment. When stuff like this happens in other sports, it’s clear it was cheating. In NASCAR, it’s not black and white and that’s just the way that it is.
Coble and others like to sometimes make apples-to-apples comparisons when it comes to NASCAR and other sports but that simply isn’t the way it works. Those who understand the sport know that and those who don’t will continue to think that all NASCAR does is promote cheating.
