Wallace surprised by NASCAR spoiler penalty

CONCORD, N.C. -- Rusty Wallace voiced his displeasure Friday regarding the penalties he received from NASCAR this week.

	Rusty Wallace Credit: Autostock

"All I can tell you it's a major disappointment," Wallace said, while waiting out a rain delay for qualifying for the UAW-GM Quality 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. "It's a major surprise. I didn't know anything about this spoiler.

The infraction stemmed from what NASCAR said was, "an inconsistent thickness" on the rear spoiler of the No. 2 Ford at Talladega. The spoiler was found during pre-practice inspection and wasn't used during the actual race.

The 25 driver points dropped Wallace to 172 points behind leader Tony Stewart, but kept him in fifth place in the standings. Also, team owner Roger Penske was docked 25 owner points and crew chief Billy Wilburn was fined $25,000.

"I know you've got to have rules and rules are rules, but the more I thought about this I felt like the whole thing was uncalled for -- personally. There are car owner points and there are driver points.

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"I wished they would have just taken the 25 car owner points, instead of taking 25 driver points and 25 car owner points. You can win the championship off of driver points, but you can't win it off of car owner points."

Still, Wallace has been around long enough to know that complaining about won't get him anywhere. So, he just has to refocus his efforts to earn his second Winston Cup Series championship.

"It's upsetting, but there's nothing you can do about it" Wallace said. "I've never seen anything like this changed, but I sure didn't see it coming."