Given the restrictive nature of the ethos of ‘stock’ car racing, which originally was aimed at taking cars straight out of the showroom and on to the racetrack, crew chiefs and mechanics have toiled to find ever more ingenious ways of making their cars run faster.
The penalty handed out to Team Penske’s Joey Logano, fined $10,000 for wearing webbed gloves to restrict air coming into his cockpit and thereby reduce drag during qualifying in Atlanta, is a perfect example of discovering enterprising solutions that have a material impact (quite literally in this case!).
Who was the first driver in NASCAR to be penalized?
We can go back to NASCAR’s very first ‘strictly stock’ race in 1949, held over 150 miles on a ¾-mile dirt track in Charlotte, North Carolina for a first instance of cheating. Glenn Dunaway won the race, finishing three laps ahead of Jim Roper, in Herbert Westmoreland’s 1947 Ford.
But the car, which had been a genuine moonshine-runner, was found to be running illegal rear springs and he was thrown to the bottom of the results.
A lawsuit then followed, which was thrown out of court, which allowed NASCAR founder Bill France Sr to be emboldened in handing out penalties.
The early days of NASCAR stock cars
Photo by: NASCAR Media
Fast forward to the modern era, and the introduction of the Next Gen car in the 2022 season: NASCAR updated its penalty system to include much harsher consequences for violations – including the revoking of playoff eligibility – with respect to modifying parts from single-source suppliers.
Much of the construction of the Next Gen car revolves around single-source supplied parts, greatly reducing or eliminating the need of individual teams to spend money developing and producing their own.
And while this didn’t stop teams from pushing those boundaries, it’s turned into quite a costly exercise to find out what they can get away with… And that includes the sport’s biggest teams.
The biggest fine in NASCAR history: Half a million dollars
In March 2023, NASCAR issued penalties to five Cup Series teams – all four Hendrick Motorsports cars and one from Kaulig Racing – for the unapproved modification of a single-source part, namely the hood louvers.
The Level 2 transgression was, per NASCAR’s rulebook, “A Radiator Duct Note: Unapproved modification of a single source vendor supplied part (hood louvers).”
Hood louvers are vents in the hood on…
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