NASCAR teams face no penalties over roof flaps
NASCAR Wire Service
Distributed by The Sports Xchange
Sixteen teams in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and 15 teams in the NASCAR Nationwide Series can breathe a little easier.
NASCAR announced Wednesday that after a thorough review it will not assess any penalties to the 31 teams that had to change out the spacers that support the hinge bar of the car's roof laps last week at Daytona International Speedway. The roof flaps are a design feature that helps to prevent cars from going airborne in the event of a spin.
"We examined this from every aspect we possibly could and determined that there would be no penalties involved," said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR vice president of competition. "Based upon our inspection and subsequent review, it was our determination that the functionality and safety aspects of the roof flaps were not compromised and the on-track competition would not be impacted.
"Moving forward, we will work with the roof flap manufacturer and the race teams to evaluate and optimize the associated installation hardware, review the process in its totality and communicate in a timely manner to the garage area any revisions that we determine need to be made."
NASCAR required the 16 NASCAR Sprint Cup teams to swap out non-conforming spacers that were first noticed during the inspection process prior to the opening NASCAR Sprint Cup practice at Daytona for the Coke Zero 400. The issue delayed some cars getting out on the track for practice while they replaced the unapproved parts.
The 16 NASCAR Sprint Cup cars that were out of compliance included Jamie McMurray, Brad Keselowski, Marcos Ambrose, Denny Hamlin, Casey Mears, Clint Bowyer, Greg Biffle, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, Trevor Bayne, Joey Logano, Aric Almirola, Michael Waltrip, Martin Truex Jr. and Carl Edwards.
The 15 Nationwide cars included Blake Koch, Landon Cassill, Trevor Bayne, Kenseth, Mike Bliss, Brian Vickers, Robert Richardson Jr., Jason White, Reed Sorenson, Michael Annett, Cole Whitt, Busch, Travis Pastrana, Jeffrey Earnhardt and Dexter Stacey.
