NASCAR officials are investigating #48-Jimmie Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports team for a possible rules violation during the Sprint All-Star Race on Saturday night. A NASCAR official said after the race that a Johnson crewman was being investigated for modifying the side skirt on Johnson’s car during the race. NASCAR implemented new rules prior to this season preventing teams from modifying the side skirts during a race. NASCAR also has new video cameras monitoring pit road, making such rules violations easier to detect. Any possible penalties would be announced next week.(Sporting News)(5-17-2015)
UPDATE: NASCAR will issue a warning but won’t penalize the Hendrick Motorsports team of Jimmie Johnson for pulling out a side skirt body panel Saturday night during the Sprint All-Star Race. At the start of the year, NASCAR announced it wouldn’t allow the flaring out of fenders and body panels near the wheel wells, something that occurred with regularity over the last half of the 2014 season. The penalty is that a team must come in under green to fix it or, if the repair is done while under caution, then the driver must do a pass-through penalty (driving down pit road at pit-road speed) under green. Anyone found involved in such modifications, on first offense, gets a warning.(ESPN.com)(5-19-2015)
