NASCAR officials have decided that it would be good for the sport if they were to inflict some of the hardest punishments on a team that can barely withstand it. Haas-CNC Racing has been hit right between the eyes with a debilitating amount of penalties after both the 66 and the 70 were found, according to NASCAR.com, guilty of “actions detrimental to stock car racing” and “wing mounting locations were not as specified by the NASCAR Sprint Cup Rule Book”. In my opinion, and strictly my opinion, this is crap. What actions were detrimental to Stock Car Racing?

The punishments for these “infractions” that were discovered at Lowe’s Motor Speedway last weekend, is the most severe that I have ever heard. Do they fit the crime? I don’t know. Are they going to hurt Haas-CNC more than if it was Gibbs, Hendrick, Ganassi, Rousch, or Childress? Hell Yes!!!!!

According to NASCAR.com the punishments are as follows:

• Riggs (66) and Sauter(70) docked 150 points
• Both Car owners docked 150 owner points
• The Crew Chief and the car chief of each team are suspended from the next 6 races and form NAsCAR until July 9 and on probation until Dec 31.
• Both crew chiefs were fined $100,000 each.
• Both of the cars in question have been confiscated by NASCAR.

Concerning this “infraction”, the 66 crew chief Bootie Barker, told ESPN that he had been running all season the same wing mount setup on the car that was confiscated.

In the same ESPN article John Darby stated that “All I know is the mounts were not in the same place as they were Thursday morning when they went through inspection”.

I don’t know what happened and I don’t really care. I do care about the image of NASCAR and I think this could bring a lot of motives in question. Why so hard on the little guys? It is all ready hard enough to compete with the larger, richer, and more powerful teams. Are you trying to manipulate the system and get a good old boy in the top 35 by taking an extreme position against this team? Maybe some disclosure would be good this time.