NASCAR Busts Junior in the Nationwide Series

The buzz in the garage area and in the media prior to Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Daytona was all about – you guessed it – Dale Earnhardt Jr. The crew for Junior’s no. 5 Chevy tinkered with the deck lift after the initial round of inspections and were soon caught, causing him to start the race from the back of the field. Junior did manage to climb his way up through the 43-car field to finish the race in third place, but the team wasn’t left with as much of a sense of accomplishment when NASCAR issued their penalties on Wednesday.

Earnhardt himself was docked 50 driver points, which are probably of little concern to NASCAR’s most popular driver since he has no intentions of running the full Nationwide schedule. What does hurt the team, however, is the fact that NASCAR additionally dinged car owner Rick Hendrick with 50 owner points and not only fined Crew Chief Chad Walter in the sum of $25k, but also suspended him for the span of the next six races and placed him on probation for the remainder of the season.

The Nationwide Series cars of David Gilliland, Johnny Sauter, Kertus Davis, Cale Gale, and David Stremme were found guilty of rule infractions of their own. All of them have been docked 25 points and their Crew Chiefs also suspended for the next six races.  Click here for the complete story.

In similar news, after making a spectacular run in the Daytona 500, Robby Gordon was penalized for an unapproved front bumper cover that was caught in the opening day inspections for the race during speedweeks. Robby was hit with the loss of 100 driver points and his Crew Chief, Frank Kerr, was fined $100k and suspended for the next six races in the Sprint Cup Series.  Click here for the complete story.