France: NASCAR willing to levy harsher penalties (cont'd)

Other topics France discussed Tuesday were:

• International expansion: France recently traveled to China with his senior management group to tour a track in Shanghai and discuss opportunities in the Far East. NASCAR will make its Canadian debut next month with a Busch Series race in Montreal, and the series already competes in Mexico City.

"We'll be careful of how we proceed, but we'll be looking at building our international platform,'' he said.

• Going Green: NASCAR switched to unleaded fuel this season, and France said he's been exploring alternative fuels. ``It's important for NASCAR to lead in some areas -- this being one of them -- when it comes to the environment, when it comes to our dependency on foreign oil. It's important for us to stay in a leadership position,'' he said.

• Lawsuits: NASCAR is fighting a claim by AT&T to replace Cingular as the logos on Jeff Burton's car, a move NASCAR is against because of its exclusivity agreement with rival Nextel. And, France said NASCAR continues to defend itself in an antitrust suit filed by Kentucky Speedway.

• Busch Series sponsorship: France said NASCAR remains on track to have an announcement this summer on a replacement for Anheuser-Busch, which is pulling out as Busch Series title sponsor after this season. "We're going to get a partner for the long haul of the country's second most popular form of motorsports,'' he said.

But the bulk of his time was spent discussing cheating, which has been prevalent in the sport since the season-opening Daytona 500. Five teams were caught breaking the rules in Daytona, and NASCAR has attempted to ramp up its penalty process each time.

He said Gordon and Johnson's punishment was the strongest to date because the drivers were not given any track time for one day in Sonoma, Calif., and not being able to qualify their cars "pretty much eliminated them from contention of winning that race in our view.''

Gordon finished that race in seventh, Johnson was 17th.

"We feel very strongly that we're going to be very, very tough on people that test us with the Car of Tomorrow,'' France said. "The whole premise is built around not being able to do much fudging with the car.''

NASCAR disqualified Brian Vickers last week at New Hampshire when his car failed a post-qualifying inspection. Because he is not one of the 35 teams locked into the starting field, the penalty cost him a spot in the race.

But the penalties levied against Gordon, Johnson and Earnhardt have not had the same effect. In fact, Gordon had such a cushion in the standings, he still holds a 156-point lead over Denny Hamlin after losing 100 points.

France said NASCAR won't customize its penalties to impact teams differently.

"The teams that are winning, despite what we may fine them, they are just good teams,'' France said. "They're going to win when they race with the same rules package everybody else has ... they get through any kind of adversity to a point.

"We can't just customize the penalty based on the circumstance. We can't just say that is going to be 200 instead of 100 because he has a big lead. But we can find the right penalties.''