NASCAR likely will levy additional penalties to the JR Motorsports and Hendrick Motorsports teams sent to the back at the start of the Busch Series race Saturday for lug nuts that did not meet specifications at Texas Motor Speedway. The #88 team with driver Brad Keselowski and the #24 team with driver Casey Mears had to replace all of the lug nuts on the tires on the car as well as the on the tires in the pits after NASCAR had an issue with them. “We had some lug nuts that had a thread turned out of them, just trying to make pit stops faster,” said JR Motorsports director of competition Tony Eury Sr. “We’ve got a Busch crew here against all these Cup crews it’s hard to compete against them. We just stepped over the line a little bit trying to be even.”(SceneDaily.com)(11-3-2007)
UPDATE: NASCAR announced that Chad Walter, crew chief of the #24 Chevy driven by Casey Mears, and Tony Eury Sr., crew chief of the #88 Chevy driven by Brad Keselowski in the Busch Series, have been fined and penalized due to rule violations at Texas Motor Speedway. Both crew chiefs were fined $10,000 and placed on probation until December 31, 2007, for violating Sections 12-4-A (actions detrimental to stock car racing), 12-4-Q (car, car parts, components and/or equipment used that do not conform to NASCAR rules) and 20A 10.7F: (lug nuts were not fully threaded; threads had been removed) of the 2007 Busch Series Rule Book. The infraction was discovered during pre-race inspection on November 3.(NASCAR PR)(11-7-2007)
