Question – I understand Chad Knaus’ concern for his crew members, but shouldn’t Jimmie Johnson have gotten a penalty when Chad went over the wall with no helmet and for having too many men over the wall? I’m glad no one was seriously injured. Answer Larry McReynolds: With all the rules in NASCAR being black and white or red and green, yeah, there’s no question that Chad Knaus probably did look at the right front fender when he went over there. But, trust me, I know Chad, and I would have been the same way. He went over there to see if any of his crew members were laying on the ground. He didn’t do any work. If he had pulled on the fender, rubbed on the grill or did anything, then I would say certainly that a penalty should have been assessed. But he didn’t do that. He went to check on his fellow crew members. Answer Jeff Hammond: In hindsight, it would have given them too many men over the wall. I was only privileged to see a couple different angles of it, but I didn’t see Chad Knaus do anything to the race car. If he was going out there to pick up somebody off the ground, check them out or see if his guys were OK, common sense prevails, and it’s OK. Granted, the helmet wasn’t on Knaus’ head, but this was a unique circumstance. He didn’t have the helmet, but he did, at least, have the fire suit. If he went over and did something to the race car and really participated in the pit stop, then I would say NASCAR blew a call. But from the different angles that I saw, all I could see was a concerned crew chief running over to see if everybody was OK. Everybody was getting up, moving and getting going again so he got back out of the way. A NASCAR official was there, but probably at about that time, he was too busy trying to think about what happened because he was trying to get out of the way. There were a lot of things going on, and the official probably just missed the call. But it was a common sense situation, and Knaus didn’t do anything.( FoxSports )(9-16-2003)
