Appeal Denied: Labbe Suspension Upheld By Nascar
Thursday, May 18th, 2006 8:58am CDT
By Luke, Thunder Lounge
Published on Thunder Lounge.
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[thumb:349:l:s=1:l=x]Slugger Labbe believes the suspension of 4 weeks he received from Nascar in wake of an infraction at Richmond is too harsh. Chad Knaus, crew chief for the #48 Lowe’s Monte Carlo of Jimmie Johnson, also was suspended for 4 weeks at the beginning of the season.
Labbe sum’s up the difference in the violations with one word; flagrant.
“If I felt it was over the line I wouldn’t have done it because I understand the value of 25 points and $25,000,” Labbe said during the Nextel Pit Crew Competition at the Charlotte Bobcats Arena. “I thought long and hard about it. I had conversations with different people in our organization and felt confident in what we were doing.”
Labbe wasn’t objecting to being penalized, merely he was stating that it was too harsh compared to other penalties. Where the earlier penalty for Knaus was the same as the one received by the #88 team, Slugger said that the circumstances were quite different. The #48 team was flagrantly bending the rules, while he simply pushed a gray area that wasn’t clearly defined in the rulebook.
In the end, it’s Nascar’s sandbox, and the teams are in essence a guest in the playpen. This could very well be a message to the rest of the garage that the penalties are going to become stiffer, as well as the fact that pushing so-called gray area’s in a manner to attempt to gain an advantage taken away in another area will not be tolerated.
That last statement is Nascar’s issue with this. While it was in one of those gray area’s, they believed it was an attempt to gain an advantage that was lost with the new shock rules implemented last fall. While what caused that rule at the time was a gray area, and not clearly defined, it caused Nascar to define it. In their eyes, Labbe’s modification was an attempt to circumvent that rule, hence the stiffness of the penalty.
When it comes down to it, there isn’t a car on the track on any given raceday that doesn’t have something, somewhere, that pushes a gray area. It’s all part of competition. How far it is pushed, is the question it seems.
Is this a part of the sport, and the nature of the beast, or is this something that should be filtered out? The plain and simple fact is that is what crew chief’s get paid to do. No, not to cheat. The get pushed to work within the gray area’s in order to be as competitive as possible. Sometimes Nascar says ok, sometimes they issue a penalty. In other cases, they implement a new rule.
Take into consideration one such famous crew chief, that is now a team owner. Yes, Ray Evernham. Anybody recall the infamous car he built by the nickname of T-Rex? It was buried so deep in gray area’s that Nascar issued a slew of new rules to compensate. They couldn’t technically fine him, because it wasn’t cheating. However, they did finally tell him that if he brought that car back to the track that they would. After the fact, Nascar worked with Hendrick Motorsports and Ray Evernham to see what Ray had done.
In today’s Nascar there are gray area’s, obviously flagrant attempts to cheat (Harvick’s crew chief last year with the “fake” fuel level), and then there is middle ground. It’s this middle ground where Nascar has to make a call as to whether they believe it is worth a penalty or not.
In this case, they thought it was.
Filed Under: Nascar, Nextel Cup
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