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Brad Keselowski gets 10-point penalty for Michigan inspection failure
Brad Keselowski and his team lost 10 points on Wednesday after the car’s laser inspection failure following Sunday’s race at Michigan.
Keselowski has four wins, tied for most in the series with Kyle Busch, and the Chase begins in three races. Given Keselowski is already in the Chase, the point penalty doesn’t harm his standing or his chances for the championship in the slightest. If you care about how it affects Keselowski for the next two races, he’s still in second in the standings and now 35 points back of points leader Kevin Harvick.
While the points penalty is meaningless, the $10,000 fine given to crew chief Paul Wolfe is in real money.
The penalty was considered a P2 penalty, a level lower than the post-race penalty given to Matt Kenseth after the July New Hampshire race for his car’s laser inspection failure. Kenseth won that race and got to keep the three Chase bonus points for the win. He was instead penalized 15 points, another virtually meaningless penalty because the win was Kenseth’s second of the season. He was not going to be missing the Chase after the New Hampshire race.
While we point out the, pardon the pun, pointlessness of the penalties to show the absurdity of NASCAR’s penalty system as it fits within the structure of the Chase, we also make these observations not knowing the best way to make the penalty arrangements fit better. Kenseth could have (and probably should have) been denied his Chase bonus points for the win, but since Keselowski didn’t win on Sunday there’s no win to take away.
And given that NASCAR deemed Keselowski penalty to be relatively minor, any Chase repercussions would be a strong overreaction. The penalty would be a much bigger deal if it happened to a driver like Chris Buescher, who needs to be in the top 30 after Richmond to qualify for the Chase thanks to his win at Pocono. If it was Buescher’s car that failed inspection and got the same penalty Keselowski did, he’d be in 31st, three points behind David Ragan.
This simply seems to be a case of NASCAR being in a position to give a penalty because it’s defined as one in the rulebook while knowing full well it means nothing given the circumstances of the team being penalized.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
