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Both Haas CNC Cars Confiscated by NASCAR

Written by John Davison · May 27, 2008

CONCORD, N.C. - NASCAR confiscated both cars from the Haas CNC Racing teams after a ‘discrepancy’ was found in the rear wing mounting plates on the No. 66 and the No. 70 cars Saturday morning. The cars were removed from the track and taken to NASCAR’s R&D Center, just minutes from the track, where they will be investigated further.

Spokesman for NASCAR Kerry Tharp explained that there was “an issue with the upper rear-wing mounting points” of the cars. Apparently, the mounting brackets had the mounting holes for the wing element changed from the locations approved by NASCAR. “The discrepancy was brought to our attention, and we addressed it,” Tharp said. “The garage is a self-policing area. We follow-up on information we get [and] we’re always inspecting racecars. That was the case with this.”

The mounting bolts, sealed after Thursday’s qualifying inspection, were also found to be unsealed on Saturday. “Honestly, we respect their process and we’re just trying to wait and find out where it goes — what went wrong,” said Haas CNC Racing general manager Joe Custer.

“I’m not a tech guy,” Custer added. “I don’t know how or why this came about. Again, they’re going to step us through it, we’re going to listen and move forward.”

There may be more to this than initially meets the eye. NASCAR should issue an announcement concerning their investigation later this week.

Further checking seemed to indicate that the mounting holes in the wing bracket had been changed from their intended locations. NASCAR’s rule book dictates that the brackets be created from a specified computer file driving CNC machines. Whether this was changed on the No. 66 and No. 70 cars, or whethere there was some other fiddling remains to be seen.

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3 Responses to “Both Haas CNC Cars Confiscated by NASCAR”

  1. Rich Hemstreet on May 27th, 2008 9:50 pm

    After 28th and 35th place finishes it doesn’t appear that the Haas CNC team has found a magical way to speed up the COT. I’m glad NASCAR tries to keep things fair, but did they really have to confiscate both cars, and not just the questionable parts?

    It would be interesting to know… do any teams still try very hard to get away with anything,or have the penalties become too harsh? Wouldn’t you love to see Junior show up with a vinyl roof on the #88 at Dover? Or maybe Matt Kenseth with a “banana shaped” #17 Fusion, that somehow still fit all the templates?

    Or what if the #28 car shows up with the Lafayette Ford sponsorship again,but this time Travis gets 10 extra laps on each tank of fuel, sort of Lorenzen-like? There’s rumors of “stuff” being done to some of the cars… but it still doesn’t seem like the good old days!

  2. Why bother even trying anymore? - FastMachines.com on May 29th, 2008 7:39 pm

    [...] If you haven’t already read it, my colleague John Davison here at FastMachines wrote about the specifics of the violations on Tuesday.  Basically, it boiled down to the team moving the wing by changing the bolt locations where the [...]

  3. Why even bother trying anymore? « Ray’s Weblog on May 29th, 2008 7:49 pm

    [...] If you haven’t already read it, my colleague John Davison here at FastMachines wrote about the specifics of the violations on Tuesday.  Basically, it boiled down to the team moving the wing by changing the bolt locations where the [...]

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