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I hate the idea of docking points. While that does hurt them it doesn't make up for the others they beat while cheating. Third place didn't deserve third place points, he was the first legal car! Instead of docking 25 points how about they drop their finishing order to reflect a net loss of 25 points. That also rewards the legal cars who were in the running.

Marty Smith was on SpeedChannel tonight and makes a pretty compelling arguement for revisiting the 48's penalty.

If the car was too low in the rear it would actually hurt the car's performance by creating less downforce. The inverse of course is the exact reason why the penalty on the 5 car should remain intact.

Smith also said that NASCAR has been waiting for the opportunity to go after Knaus because they don't like how he pushes the envelope. That comments sounds an awful lot like how NASCAR felt about Everham (who Knaus learned under) when he built that car for the Winston many years ago, Gordon blew the field away, and they were told to never bring that car back.

John, back to your original question about forfeiting a win. That would be in contrast to a long standing NASCAR tradition that the fans know who wins when they leave the track. Now that the races are made for television I suppose this to is fair game.

If you want to tell me that a team can be sent home in pre-race or pre-qualifying inspection for an extreme penalty such as what the 29 team did last week, I'm probably OK with that. Let the team deal with the sponsor pressure of being caught.

To Adam from App State whose comment spam I just black flagged:

Yes, I blog. Ain't that obvious?

If you want me to fill out the survey, send the link to my e-mail address that's right at the top of the links rail and I'd be happy to fill it out.

Sorry I missed Marty. For such a young guy with a funky haircut, he seems to know a ton about NASCAR. (I like what he writes over at www.nascar.com.)

From what I understand about NASCAR physics -- and it ain't much, admittedly -- lowering the roof gives it a little bit of an aerodynamic boost. I'm a little skeptical of his explanation that Dustin reported today that one broken bolt could have thrown his car that much out of whack. But maybe it did.

As for going nuclear -- i.e. stripping a victory -- NASCAR's done that in the past, but it's rare, and I think (or so Dustin told me today) that it's been for on-track incidents. I honestly don't know what NASCAR should do. Dustin's working on something related for the weekend, btw.

One bonus to this cheating talk is this: At least we have something to talk about other than Dale Jr.'s dismal start to this season.

I think the more detailed explanation of what happened to the 48 when the wedge bolt broke is that it pulled the back end down only, raising the front end slightly. This did 2 things to slow the car down, it forced the front end up making in theory it harder to turn and also took more spoiler off the car; both of which are events you would not want to happen at a track like Vegas.

The opposite was true on the 5 which should have made that car go faster, clearly a penalty. Smith's point was that even though the what happened to the 48 caused it to go slower that NASCAR does not want to hear it.

Thanks for that explanation, Mark.

But Johnson did win the race, after all, which makes his story -- how should I say this? -- a bit hard to believe.

Hey, sometimes things break and you go faster. Remember when Bob Allison won at Daytona after losing either a piece or the entire back panel to his car. It was in the early/mid 80's and he was left with the spoiler and the bumper, but the piece into between the 2 was gone. This was not the race where he beat Davey Allison, but I think when he drove the white 15 for Bud Moore.

I'm glad to see NASCAR crack down on cheating. Racing fans deserve an honest race, just as baseball fans deserve steroid-free ballgames.

Should cheaters be stripped of victories after the fact? Perhaps, but the current penalties (fines, point deductions and crew chief suspensions) may be enough. And the amount of the fines and point deductions always can be increased and suspensions can be lengthened.

I'd suggest giving these remedies a shot before doing something as radical as stripping someone of a victory. As Mark said, fans expect to leave the race track knowing who won.

Now, if cheaters were caught in a pre-race inspection and disqualified from racing that week, I'd be fine with that.

Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Seems that a bunch of readers who responded to last week's online poll feel the same way. NASCAR might not want to change the results after the fans have left the track. But most people seem more cool that justice be served.