At the center of penalties, Darby remains steadfast (cont'd)

Q: How difficult is it for you to be second-guessed by so many people?

Darby: Cold and blunt ... what you constantly need to remind yourself is that NASCAR is the sanctioning body that runs this sport. You have to shield as much of that (criticism) out of your decision-making process as you can, because at the end of the day, regardless of what decision you make, your odds are at best 50-50. If there's 100 media people here, 50 are gonna understand it and think it was the right way to go and 50 are gonna think it's wrong.

John Darby

You try to stay away from (criticism) as much as you can and put more effort into what's genuinely good, not only for the sport but for all the competitors in the garage that are involved.

Q: When it comes to rule enforcement in NASCAR, how much is written down in the rule book saying, "If this is what you do, this is what's going to happen to you," and how much of it is handled on a case-by-case basis?

Darby: I think NASCAR is like every other professional sport. On game day, we have a list of rules and a list of written penalties for (breaking those rules). Just like in football, a clip is 15 yards. In NASCAR, too many men over the wall is tail of the longest line. You could go down the whole sheet of penalties for the race. They're very prescribed. They're published. They're written. That's the deal.

The technical penalties that we have inside the garage, you have to like to corking a bat or the running back that's full of steroids. It puts you in a position where you have to look at them on an individual basis, because as long as I've been in this deal, I've never seen two (infractions) that are exact. There's always a little twist, a little something different about the situation you saw five years ago as opposed to the situation that's laying on the table in front of you.

When you couple that with the fact that for the last couple of years, we've been trying to ramp up the penalty system to further deter a lot of the stuff that intentionally can happen, that combination doesn't allow to photo copy penalty to penalty.

Q: How many people have input into determining what the penalty for a technical infraction is going to be?

Darby: A minimum of three and probably a maximum of 12. For the most part, it's up to the competition department, which is typically myself, Jerry Cook, Mike Helton, Robin Pemberton and maybe the inspectors that were involved in the situation.

We have had penalties that have gone beyond that, to where they have even reached to where Brian (France) has had some input. Jim France has had some input. Obviously, it takes a little more of a severe penalty to draw that, but we've been there many, many times. The important part of all that is there's not one person who says, "OK, here's the part and here's what I think the penalty ought to be." It is a group conversation and decision, regardless of whether it be minor or large.

Q: With that many people involved in a decision, obviously, there's going to be times when you disagree on what you should do. How do you handle such disagreements, and ultimately, who makes the final decision?

Darby: I think that's when you start looking at some history of it ... what is there in the past? What can the system stand today? Was the last go-around enough? Do we need to go beyond that? You start looking at all those elements. The best thing is, even as the group gets larger, I think everybody pretty much approaches it with an open mind.

In very few occasions is there a huge disagreement. Everybody pretty much lines up for the right reasons and we go forward.

Q: How would you respond to critics who say NASCAR, at least in part, determines penalties based on who they are, who they drive for or who their sponsor might be?

Darby: I don't know if you can respond to that. It's obvious those kinds of thoughts or statements come from people who don't understand the process or understand what all goes into creating a penalty. When you're looking at a part on a table, it doesn't have a color. It doesn't have a car number on it. It doesn't have a driver's face on it or a crew chief's face. It's a part on a table.

I won't say, if an individual forms a trend, or is involved in multiple penalties within a short period of time, that we won't sit back and say, "What's the deal here? Is this just total disrespect for all the rest of the competitors in the garage? Is it total disrespect for NASCAR and its efforts to keep everything as clean as we can?" Then that may draw a harsher penalty than what the first one, second one or third one may have been.

Q: That being said, Chad Knaus has a fairly extensive history of being penalized for working in the gray area of the rulebook. But when there was an infraction recently on Jimmie Johnson's Car of Tomorrow, he received the same penalty as Hendrick Motorsports teammate Steve Letarte, the crew chief for Jeff Gordon, who'd never been penalized for anything. How was that determined?

Darby: One thing you've gotta remember is when I talked about repetition in a short amount of time, since Daytona of 2006, Chad Knaus has made a tremendous effort to do everything the right way, all the way to winning a championship. He is our reigning champion crew chief. With that being said, there's been a lot of time that's passed.

We don't hold case files ... there's not a file that we pull out every time Chad's name is mentioned. There's been a long lapse of time since Chad was involved in a penalty. He has, for all practical purposes, demonstrated very clearly to us that, typically, he tries to do it the right way. (Because of) the fact that it was the new car and the violations were the same, it made sense to have the same penalties.