Roush Racing president Geoff Smith said he expects NASCAR officials to issue a technical bulletin as early as Friday outlawing the trick shock absorbers used by Hendrick Motorsports teammates #48-Jimmie Johnson and #5-Kyle Busch in their 1-2 finish Sunday at Dover International Speedway. Instead of soaking up bumps, as shocks normally are designed to do, Smith said the Hendrick cars’ shocks were designed almost to work in reverse; every time they hit a bump, the shocks jacked up the car’s rear end for about 15 seconds. Because cars encounter frequent bumps at Dover, the shocks apparently kept the Hendrick cars’ tails elevated about an inch beyond what NASCAR rules allow for most of the race, directing more air to the cars’ rear spoilers and creating extra aerodynamic “downforce” that helped the cars stick to the track. Cheating? Not exactly, Smith said. “It was clearly an ingenious engineering exercise, and they ought to be commended for their ingenuity,” he said. Johnson’s team declined comment through a spokesperson.
This explains why the two Hendrick cars failed an initial technical inspection by NASCAR officials Sunday night but passed the maximum-height requirement after they “settled,” as NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston explained this week. Officials confiscated the Hendrick cars’ shocks after the race, along with shocks from four other cars [#’s 2,12,6,16].
Smith expects NASCAR to prohibit all teams from using such shocks beginning with the Oct. 9 race at Kansas Speedway. The Hendrick shocks wouldn’t help in this weekend’s race because downforce isn’t a major concern at Talladega and teams typically try to get their cars as low to the ground as possible without violating NASCAR’s minimum height requirements. Smith figures that Busch, a rookie, has been testing the system all season. “That didn’t show up for a championship (contender) the day before Dover,” Smith said. “That required a lot of effort, a lot of testing.” Penske Racing president Don Miller, meanwhile, wondered why the Hendrick cars apparently were given a second chance to pass officials’ maximum-height measurement. “All I can say is, if it comes in as too high, it should be black and white,” Miller said. Said Poston, via e-mail: “When the (No.) 48 went up on the platform, it was initially high, but in a matter of seconds the car settled and it made the required height. Absolutely no one made an adjustment to the car; however, as often is the case, an inspector was under the car but did not touch it. The 48 only made one trip through inspection.”(USA Today), see past news about this on my NASCAR news page or on 9/29/2005PAGE 2 of the News.
AND more: There have been questions about whether Jimmie Johnson’s winning car at Dover and the runner-up mount of his teammate Kyle Busch initially failed a post-race inspection because the rears of their cars were too high. NASCAR spokesman Herb Branham said Thursday that there were no issues in the technical shed after the race. “All cars passed inspection,” he said. Branham added that the shocks from six cars were taken to NASCAR’s research center in Concord, N.C. Shocks were taken from the cars driven by Johnson and Busch as well as from the cars of Mark Martin, Greg Biffle, Ryan Newman and Rusty Wallace. “We just want to stay up to date with what teams are doing,” he said. “It’s a fact-finding mission similar to when we took engines at Michigan earlier this year.”(Atlanta Journal-Constitution)(9-30-2005)
