At the center of penalties, Darby remains steadfast

There was a time in John Darby's NASCAR career when he had maybe two or three know-it-all, smart-aleck reporters parsing his every move and decision. He was the Busch Series director back then, and things just seemed to be simpler.

Not that Darby is complaining. He's not. He's now the Nextel Cup director, a big fish in a big pond, where, as he puts it, people play with "different colored chips."

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What he means is that the stakes are decidedly higher on this side of the fence. These days, literally hundreds of media members pick apart his and NASCAR's every move. The money is a hundred-fold bigger, the spotlight glaringly bright.

For Darby, though, it all still comes to putting on a race.

Darby, a native of Rockford, Ill., sat down at Daytona to discuss his career, recent penalties handed by NASCAR and a variety of other subjects.

Q: What's the biggest difference between what you do now and what you did in the Busch Series?

Darby: It's the obvious that's changed. It's more exposure, more media, more of this, more of that. Purses are way higher, so there's more pressure to win those purses. Sponsorship is at a much higher level.

Although at the end of the day, you still open up and inspect the cars. You qualify, you practice and you race. All of that stuff hasn't changed, but each process is probably a little warmer water than what we had in the Busch Series.

Q: In a nutshell, what is your job description ... or does it change from day to day?

Darby: Parts do, because one of the most fun things of this job is you never know what's gonna be around the next corner. The basic responsibilities, obviously, are organizing the event through employment of 50 officials and (managing) the technical inspection procedures. The days in between Event A and Event B are usually, for the most part, spent in the office at the tech center, working on going forward.

Q: How delicate a balance do you have to have between having a good relationship with everybody in the garage, at the same time knowing that eventually, chances good are that you'll have to drop the hammer on them for something they've done?

Darby: There's parts of that that's extremely difficult. When we're inside the cage, meaning the garage, everybody's got a job to do. Everybody's got an agenda. If we can respect each other for our individual responsibilities, then life is good. But as soon as we walk out of the cage, that's when you have to shut the door on the office and we go back to enjoying the relationship that we've had numerous years.

Ironically, it seems sometimes that the guys you communicate with most, the guys you work with the most, the guys you lean on once in a while for advice, somehow getting caught up in the whirlwind of guys that you -- as you put it -- drop the hammer on. That's part of the business.

There's a mutual respect there. I'm always trying to make sure that both parties (NASCAR inspectors and team members) are comfortable in understanding that. The uniqueness of every personality in this garage is what you have to spend tremendous time in learning and understanding. We're talking about human beings. Understanding personalities, even more than knowing first and last names, is a great asset.

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.