DEI Not Helping Truex Jr’s Case for the Chase

NASCAR officials confiscated and impounded the no. 1 DEI Chevy driven by Martin Truex Jr. on Thursday afternoon when the car failed multiple attempts during the opening day inspections, as the roof failed to meet the inspection templates. The incident forced Truex to miss out on the first practice session after the team was unable to beat the roof into submission and NASCAR mandated that the team unload their backup car. Crew Chief, Kevin Manion, then decided to change the engine on the backup car, costing Martin valuable time on the track. Now, with rainy skies hovering over the Daytona infield, practice will be at a premium for this weekend’s Coke Zero 400, and there’s a very good chance that Truex will not have the opportunity to touch the track until the field is ready to qualify for the race.

“Somebody made a big mistake,” said Truex. “Shouldn’t happen in this level of auto racing, but people make mistakes. We’ll go on.”

Vice President of DEI, Johny Story, was less diplomatic about the situation. When asked about the situation, he replied, “The car fit our templates when they left the shop. Then they got down here, and apparently the greenhouse was too narrow for NASCAR’s liking. We worked on it as much as possible, but the more you work on it – well, basically we weren’t able to get it fixed.”

NASCAR is expected to examine the car at their R&D Center in Concord, NC sometime next week, and a decision as to whether or not any fines and penalties will be assessed are likely to be made at that time. This is the fourth time that NASCAR has impounded cars during opening day inspections since the introduction of the Car of Tomorrow. Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson were each penalized 100 points, fined $100,000, and the Crew Chiefs were suspended for six weeks at Infineon Raceway last year for altered front fenders. Robby Gordon was then caught with an illegal nose cover prior to the Daytona 500 this year, but he appealed the penalty, and lost no points as a result. The Haas CNC Racing cars of Scott Riggs and Johnny Sauter were impounded by NASCAR at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in May for wing-mount violations, and each of those drivers were penalized 150 driver points.

Truex is currently 14th in the points standings and sits only 71 points behind 12th place, Kevin Harvick. A penalty of 100 or 150 points would drop him to 18th in the standings as they sit now, not to mention that the points he accrues in the Coke Zero 400 will likely suffer as well as a result of a lack of track time.