When it comes to rule bending — or breaking — in NASCAR, it’s always been known as simply “cheatin’.” And it has had many practitioners. Too many to mention, in fact.
I think I’m correct when I say there hasn’t been a single NASCAR Cup team in any given race in any given year that hasn’t tried its hand in skullduggery.
“Take a look out there,” the late, longtime motorsports writer Tom Higgins of the Charlotte Observer once said to me. “There ain’t a totally legal car in the field.”
A transgression could be something that just barely crosses the line of legality, or it could be something so flagrantly illegal that it should come with a prison sentence.
You may be a NASCAR fan of many years or one who is just beginning to discover an interest in the sport. Doesn’t matter; you’ve heard or read about “cheatin’” incidents.
“Cheatin’” can take many forms, some of which seem to be so trivial they border on insignificance — like the time a team went through inspection with what was seemingly an empty box of driver goggles on the dashboard.
When inspection was complete, the box was taken out of the car and its contents — a 25-pound lead brick — removed. The car was immediately too light for legal competition (actually happened).
Other incidents have been far more creative and flagrantly outside the rules. Such as the time in the restrictor plate era when a car passed inspection because the wire attached to the plate was missed.
That wire ran beneath the dashboard, allowing the driver to yank it and pull the plate away from the carburetor and allow much greater air flow. That resulted in a powerful, sudden burst of horsepower that was very effective on a superspeedway (actually happened).
Speaking of creativity, perhaps there has been no better example of it than a car that had BBs crammed into its hollow roll bars.
Once through inspection and on the track, the driver would pull on a release mechanism and those BBs would…
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