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Following inspection failure, Truex wonders about consistency of NASCAR lasers
Is NASCAR’s laser inspection station completely accurate and repeatable? Chicago race-winner Martin Truex Jr. is certainly wondering about that.
Truex’s car failed post-race laser inspection following Sunday’s race. While NASCAR made a big deal about giving teams “encumbered” finishes for severe post-race inspection failures, it said Sunday afternoon that the failures of Truex’s car and Jimmie Johnson’s car weren’t to the baseline established for an encumbered finish.
So Truex will very likely get to keep his win, which guarantees he’ll be a part of the second round of the Chase. He told NBC Sports after the race that he thought his team could push his car through the laser inspection station four times and get four different readings.
Truex’s car failed measurements regarding the skew in the rear of the car.
“It’s just crazy how that works,” the Furniture Row Racing driver told NBC Sports. “We could probably go across that thing four times a day and get four different readings, so it’s a little frustrating, especially from our side of it — when people think that you’ve got a win and your car is illegal.
“One side is fine, and the way it read this time was the left rear was good, and the right rear was off. Usually, if the right rear is off, the left rear is off. So there’s a lot of weird stuff going on there with that machine, and it’s a little bit frustrating, for sure. At the end of the day, we need to make sure that the stuff doesn’t happen, and we’ll just have to be a little bit more conservative coming forward.”
Truex also said after the race that he was hit in the left-rear by Kevin Harvick as the two were racing together. Could it have affected the post-race measurements? We don’t know for sure. And while Truex isn’t sure about Harvick’s intentions, he’s assuming the bump was purposeful.
“He was behind me out on a restart probably 15 laps or so into a run,” Truex said of Harvick. “He got underneath me. We come off of two. We’re going down the backstretch, he hit me in the left rear as we were going straight for no reason.
“The reason I thought it was intentional is because we were on the straightaway. Typically it’s real easy not to run into somebody’s left rear on the straightaway. As far as I could tell, he did it on purpose. All I can do is assume that and wait for him to tell me otherwise.”
Despite having one of the fastest cars throughout Sunday’s race, Harvick finished 20th after he was trapped a lap down due to his pit stall position when a caution came out during the first round of pit stops.
NASCAR will announce any penalties for Truex and Johnson during the week. If NASCAR lets Truex keep the win for Chase advancement and gives both teams the same penalty, the punishment will likely be more severe for Johnson. There’s not much NASCAR can do in the form of an appropriate immediate punishment without taking away the win that would hurt Truex.
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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!
