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Bob PockrassNASCAR
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Kyle Larson remains 36 points behind the current cutoff spot heading into the elimination race Sunday at Kansas Speedway as Chip Ganassi Racing lost an appeal Friday of a penalty issued for violating the NASCAR damaged vehicle policy.
A three-member panel conducted a hearing Friday morning and denied the appeal. Chip Ganassi Racing can make one last appeal to NASCAR final appeals officer Bryan Moss, who could hear the case Friday night.
NASCAR expedited the appeals process because the race Sunday at Kansas Speedway is the final race of the second round, with the NASCAR Cup Series playoff participants being cut from 12 drivers to eight. The four drivers winless in the round and lowest in points will be eliminated.
Even at 26 points behind, Larson would have faced stiff odds to advance without winning Sunday as the maximum points a driver can earn in a race without winning is 55. At 36 points behind Martin Truex Jr. (who swept the Kansas races in 2017 and was second at Kansas in May), currently the last driver who would get in on points, and 39 points behind Clint Bowyer, Larson virtually faces a must-win situation Sunday.
NASCAR announced Wednesday that it issued a 10-point penalty to Larson, fined crew chief Chad Johnston $25,000 and suspended car chief David Bryant for one race as it determined Larson’s team used metal tabs to repair his car during the race last Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway. The rules require teams only use fasteners or tape to repair the car.
NASCAR didn’t catch the team doing it during the race or while the repairs were being made, only noticing the violation in postrace inspection Sunday night. If found during the race, NASCAR could have parked Larson for the violation, causing him to earn 25 fewer points than he did with his 11th-place finish. If NASCAR had seen the violation in the act, it possibly could have just told the team it couldn’t use the metal tabs, and the team could have tried to repair the car with fasteners or tape in the six-minutes allotted.
CGR, in a statement Thursday, said it felt it followed proper procedure.
“After reviewing the penalty, the rule and the procedure that we used during the race in Talladega, we feel strongly that we did nothing wrong,” the team said in a statement.
The definition of a fastener is not in the NASCAR rulebook, but the NASCAR rules put the onus on the teams to be sure they use approved parts and pieces, requiring the teams to ask if a part or piece is legal before its use.
NASCAR annually designates industry experts who can hear appeals and it appoints three people from that list. Moss, the final appeals officer, is a former president of Gulfstream.
The members of the appeals board that heard the Ganassi appeal were Chuck Deery, Dixon Johnston and Cathy Rice.