NASCAR: Joe Gibbs Racing Gets Caught Cheating: Now What?

Joe Gibbs Racing has been caught with their pants down around their ankles or with their hands in the cookie jar. You pick your analogy. The point being they were in the wrong and now everybody knows.

After Saturday's Nationwide Series race in Michigan NASCAR took ten cars into their possession in order to place them on the chassis dynamometer to gauge everyone's horsepower. The cars they took were: the Fords of Jack Roush numbers 60 and 16, the Toyota of Todd Braun number 32, the Chevrolet's of JR Motorsports number 5 and 88, Phoenix Racing's number 1 and Richard Childress' number 2, the Dodges of Chip Ganassi number 40 and Joe Gibbs Racings number 20 and 18.

NASCAR started putting the cars on the dynamometers after the Nationwide race in Chicagoland when other competitors, specifically Clint Bowyer, repeatedly said that "a monkey could drive that 20 car and win."

So NASCAR wanted to determine if the Toyota's and the organization of Joe Gibbs Racing had a horsepower advantage. After determining that they did, NASCAR then implemented the tapered spacer which restricts airflow to the engine therefore eliminating horsepower.

What many believe is that NASCAR only mandated it to the Toyota teams, which is not the case. All teams of all makes were given the spacer, except the Toyotas were just a tad smaller than the others which eliminated 15 extra horsepower that they had.

The first race the spacer was applied at was O'Reilly Raceway Park in Indiana, which is a short-track so the horsepower effect really didn't come into play.

The true test was this weekend at the two-mile Michigan International Speedway.

And so after the race was complete NASCAR again wanted to check the horsepower numbers. That's when they discovered that the 20 car driven by Tony Stewart and the 18 car driven by Joey Logano had magnets that were placed under the accelerator. What that does is stop the gas pedal from going all the way to the floor and the result is a non-accurate reading of the power produced by the two cars.

In effect Joe Gibbs Racing and whomever may be responsible for placing the magnets, were playing the pity game.

However, they're receiving anything but pity. Team owner Richard Childress, "Their ass needs to be kicked out of there. They're shiftless. They (NASCAR) just need to do something." He went on to say "I'll say it's damn blatant. I'm surprised they got caught. When people get an advantage, they don't want to give it up and sometimes they go to extremes to keep from giving up an advantage, and that's just what they did."

NASCAR on FOX commentator Darrell Waltrip said "I would make them leave those magnets under the accelerator. Just tell them, 'OK, you want those magnets under there so they are going to stay there all the time.'"

There are so many questions swarming around this development since it broke on Sunday. For example, "Will this or should this taint Joey Logano?" And "Does this have anything to do with performance on the Cup side?" And my personal favorite, "Who knew about this and how high does it go?"

Now it's important to point out that what happened on Saturday had no effect on the performance in the race and it would have been a disadvantage. However, they still manipulated the rules and got caught. Plain and simple they were cheating.

Because of that they should be penalized and there are those who agree and those who don't. The people who say that Joe Gibbs Racing should not be penalized because what happened had no effect on the race or the outcome, think about this:

In 2004 Dale Earnhardt Jr. was penalized 25 championship points and $10,000 for saying a four letter word on national television. The crime he committed had nothing to do with the outcome of the race.

Also in 2004 Jimmie Johnson was fined $10,000 for covering up the Powerade bottles in victory lane at Pocono. Johnson is sponsored by Gatorade and didn't want the rival logo on TV. Once again his action had nothing to do with performance or the outcome of the race.

Does anyone see the trend here? If not, here's one more.

Last year Tony Stewart was fined 25 championship points and $25,000 for his 'BS' slip in victory lane at Indianapolis. His action, once again, had nothing to do with the outcome of the race.

The questions that should be asked are "What happens now?" and "Where do we go from here?"

NASCAR is clearly angry about this and if they want to stay consistent then the 18 and 20 teams need to be penalized in some way, whether in points or money. Or maybe even a forced vacation.

As for where do we go from here? We go on to Bristol where I'm sure we'll hear Brain Vickers, Kyle Busch and the many others from Toyota complain about being unfairly punished.

Sorry boys, I don't think you were punished I think you were stopped from taking over and dominating, which resulted in everyone except your fans from turning their televisions off in disgust.

Besides, what are you guys really complaining about anyway? You're still running well and winning, it's not as if you're finishing twenty-fifth each week. So just be thankful those days haven't arrived...yet.