Word on the street is that Chad Knaus told Jimmie Johnson over the radio that if he won the NASCAR Talladega race, to intentionally damage the rear end of the car.
The instruction was made by Knaus over the radio in case the car was not within tolerances. His reasoning was if all the bump-drafting had tweaked up the back end to make it out of tolerances, well, I surmise, he didn’t want to take that chance.
Which has me wondering a few things.
First up, is it me, or do you think that NASCAR officials are pretty on-top of their game and understand in-race damage? Yep, that’s what I thought. So I’m ixnaying that excuse!
And Knaus has a history of bucking the system right into and past the grey areas of the rulebook.
Which has me wondering just what was done for that tiny bit of advantage at the restrictor plate race, and why in god’s green earth he’d say that over the radio? What happened to the “check your tach” code, which means go to a private channel???
[click to continue reading…]
Do You Really Think There Aren’t NASCAR Team Orders?
An NBaP Opinion piece:
Back at Richmond, there seemed to be a questionable scenario where one driver seemed to be in cahoots with other drivers and spun his car during the NASCAR Sprint Cup event, bringing out a caution which gathered up the field and gave Kevin Harvick the shot he needed to win the race while he was trying to beat Jeff Gordon. And that other driver is, in a fashion, associate with Kevin Harvick’s team.
At first I wasn’t sure. But watching the video tapes of radio chatter that we were pounded with during last week’s rain delay, well, it sure does look fishy. And obviously, the driver forget his code for changing radio channels.
Now there’s an interesting perspective that when J.J. Yeley pushed Matt Kenseth around the track on the last lap at Chicago, that he was running under suggestions from a fellow Ford team.
-
The Ugly of the Reality
To be honest, no matter how you cut it, no matter what really happens there’s bound to be things that take place between teams that are in some way, related teams. Considering there are really, it feels like, only four, five huge entities in the sport and where they’re not in a garage, they’re leasing engines or chassis to other teams.
Plus, I think we get caught up in the spin we are subjected to (That might be too harsh a term), where everyone is, more or less, super nice to the world outside the sport of NASCAR. It is a family oriented sport, is it not?
-
[click to continue reading…]
