News-Record.com

DATE: Sunday, August 4, 2002
SECTION: SPORTS
PAGE: C1

YOUR CHEATIN' HEART
By Dustin Long/Staff Writer

In the garages of NASCAR, rules are bent like sheet metal. It's part of the history of the sport, but it's only cheating if you get caught.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Chad Knaus offers no apologies for breaking the rules last month at Daytona.

"We were looking for a bit of an advantage," says the clean-cut crew chief of rookie driver Jimmie Johnson's team. "We needed something. We knew we weren't going to be quite as good as what we were at Talladega. Thought we had found something."

Instead, NASCAR officials found that the Winston Cup team offset the mounting bolts for the front of the truck trailing arms by about half an inch. The change, many say, was intended to help lower the car, making it less wind resistant and, thus, faster.

Series officials docked Johnson 25 driver points, penalized Rick Hendrick 25 owner points and fined Knaus $25,000 in one of the season's stiffest penalties.

"Those are the rules and you don't mess with them," says John Darby, the first-year Winston Cup series director.

NASCAR has penalized 22 teams this season, including the top three in the points.

Even so, more discipline won't stop crew chiefs from trying to gain an unfair advantage. NASCAR's action only has forced crews to be smarter in skirting the rules.

"Being creative is my job, so if I'm going to get fined or penalized for being creative, then that's just part of it," Knaus says.

In a sport that traces its roots to moonshiners trying to outrun the law, cheating is a part of it, too.

Glenn Dunnaway's victory at Charlotte in NASCAR's first race in 1949 was disallowed because his car had illegal rear springs. That's how runner-up Jim Roper became the sport's first winner.

Even with more inspectors -- "They're everywhere," says crew chief Mike Beam -- and an upgraded inspection process this season, not every infraction is caught.

"Not even close," says James Ince, crew chief for driver Johnny Benson.

Loch Ness Monster

Ince and others complain about traction control, which has become the sport's Loch Ness monster. Nearly everyone swears it exists, but no one can prove it.

Traction control is an electronic device that manages throttle control. Managing the throttle is - or at least used to be - a skill that separates drivers from one another.

That's not the only way to cheat. Many teams will try to sneak various tricks through the inspection line before today's Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Because downforce helps the cars turn in the corners, teams will try to flare their front fenders more than the half-inch allowed by the rules.

Because fuel mileage is important and helped Ricky Rudd win here in 1997, teams will try to extend fuel lines or have a fuel filler neck larger than allowed. An extra half-gallon of gas could be enough to help a team win. Someone might even try to get by with a larger fuel cell or find ways to lower the car as Knaus did. Eventually, such tricks are discovered and rules are written to cover them.

Darby estimates that 90 percent of new rules are written in response to things teams have tried. One example is with engine pieces.

A year after Rusty Wallace won nine poles in 2000 with the help of exotic -- but legal -- engine pieces, series officials announced they would mandate minimum weights for items such as pistons and rods. Wallace has not won a pole since.

Legal or not, teams look for every possible advantage. If not, another team will pass them.

That's why Kyle Petty says a car owner can't be too disappointed if his team is caught breaking the rules. His three-car team has been fined eight times for a total of $11,500 this season.

"You look at it and say you applaud the thought and why they did it ... but it's wrong," Petty says. "It's like stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. It's still stealing."

And it's still done.

Truth or consequences

There are consequences for those caught cheating.

Until this year, series officials were reluctant to deduct driver and owner points except in extreme cases.

Losing points can hurt teams more than a $25,000 fine because the season-ending points fund is spread among the top 25 in the driver standings. The difference between first and second this year is $2.3 million. That could be how much Knaus' penalty costs Johnson's team.

Johnson remains third in the points despite his penalty, but Dale Jarrett lost 25 driver points after his car failed to meet the minimum height at New Hampshire this month. With those points, Jarrett would have been 10th in the standings heading into today's race. Instead, he's 11th.

More infractions have been found because Darby has intensified the inspection process. He's put many of the 70 series officials who work each weekend into teams with a core group doing the same job each race.

That wasn't always done.

Those core inspectors are joined by series officials who do various jobs each week, so they can help fill positions when someone skips a race or when NASCAR wants to better enforce a particular area of the process.

"You're much better off looking for advantages within the rules now," says car owner Ray Evernham, who was fined $60,000 in 1995 for illegal suspension parts when he was Jeff Gordon's crew chief. "Because the advantages that you're going to get that are really outside the rules that we have now are blatantly cheating."

Pushing the envelope

Whenever NASCAR announces penalties, the sanctioning body does not use the word "cheating," which might offend a team's sponsor. But at least one company president says he's not worried if his team violated the rules.

"I think it's inherent in the sport, and it will probably always have that because there's always going to be those gray areas," says Steve Handschuh, president of NAPA Auto Parts, which sponsors Michael Waltrip's team.

Former crew chief Robin Pemberton disagrees.

"Disregard the fact that they think that cheating is an inherent part and that's what NASCAR is all about, blah, blah, blah," says Pemberton, general manager at Petty Enterprises. "It's about winning. We're not here because it's cool to cheat. We're here because it's cool to win and run good.

"Sometimes you just have to push it."

Contact Dustin Long at 373-7062 or dlong@news-record.com