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Furniture Row GM: 'High probability' inspection failure due to on-track contact
The general manager of Furniture Row Racing believes there’s a good chance contact with Kevin Harvick’s car is the reason Martin Truex Jr.’s race-winning car failed laser inspection following Sunday’s race at Chicago.
NASCAR did not reveal the severity of Truex’s inspection failure, only that it wasn’t significant enough to deserve a 35-point penalty and the loss of his race win, new types of penalties NASCAR announced earlier this week. By NASCAR rule, Truex’s first-round win puts him into the second round of the four-round Chase.
“The right rear of our car was well within the tolerance margin, which showed that we were trying to be conservative,” Furniture Row general manager Joe Garone said in a statement. “However, the left rear wheel alignment was off by approximately ten-thousandths of an inch, which in high probability was due to damage in that area as a result of being hit by [Kevin Harvick]. We believe the laser inspection numbers were correct and accept NASCAR’s decision that was made following Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series race at Chicagoland.”
Truex said after the race that he was hit in the left rear by Kevin Harvick while the two weren’t in a corner.
“The reason I thought it was intentional is because we were on the straightaway,” Truex said of Harvick’s bump. “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.”
If NASCAR deems Truex’s inspection failure was due to the damage on the car, then it’s unlikely to penalize the No. 78 team. If it feels like the failure would have happened with the contact, then it’s in an awkward spot to try to figure out how to penalize Furniture Row appropriately.
Truex isn’t going to lose the win, so a penalty of any significance would have to be applied in the second round.
And if Truex’s inspection failure was in fact due to the crash damage, maybe it’s time to figure out a better way to communicate the results of the inspection process and differentiate between a failure and a team that hasn’t immediately passed inspection.
Because of NASCAR’s announcement in the middle of the week and the rash of rear-skew related inspection failures in the weeks leading up to the Chase, the first reaction for many upon hearing the race-winning car failed inspection is going to be that the No. 78 team intentionally pushed the limits of NASCAR’s tolerance and got caught.
Not that the team failed inspection because of damage from an on-track incident. We’ll see how NASCAR treats the situation when the penalty report comes out this week.
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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!
