NASCAR issued its weekly penalty report Tuesday. In the wake of the NASCAR events at Charlotte Motor Speedway last weekend, three Sprint Cup chiefs have been suspended and teams in other series were handed fines and lost points.
Teams belonging to the Roush Fenway Racing Ford of Greg Biffle, the Chevy of Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kurt Busch and the Chevy of JTG Daugherty Racing, AJ Allmendinger teams, were all hit with P3 punishments. A P3 infraction in NASCAR usually includes violations like unauthorized parts, measurement failures, parts that fail their intended use, or a coil spring violation. The NASCAR penalty scale ranges from P1 to P6 with P6 the most serious.
Biffle’s penalty was the harshest. According to NASCAR, inspectors found several infractions during post-race inspection. They included a body design that was either not submitted to NASCAR for approval or did not comply with the approved body designs. Biffle’s crew chief, Brian Pattie, was fined $50,000 and suspended from all points races through June 15. The team will also lose 15 driver and 15 owner points. Biffle finished 11th Sunday. His was one of the cars that was the random car selected for further post-race inspection on Tuesday at the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina. The penalty will drop him from 23rd place in the standings to 24th, behind Danica Patrick.
The other two suspensions seem to be related to loose lug nuts.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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