Edwards' penalty leaves Roush with familiar feeling (cont'd)

"I will have to admit, points in the Chase are probably more valuable than ever," agreed Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president for competition. "But we rolled eight cars through the inspection process (at Dover), seven of which passed. I believe one of those was a teammate of his. It's a shame that it happened, but we have to police the sport consistently week in and week out, and a 25-point penalty is consistent with what we've done with cars being too low in the past."

Gordon may not have received a penalty for his car being too low prior to the Daytona 500, but was hit with a 100-point penalty and had his crew chief suspended for Car of Tomorrow violations at Infineon Raceway in June. And NASCAR, he reminded, has little tolerance for COT violations. Even in the midst of a championship race.

"All I know is that they have been harsh on things with the new car," Gordon said. "It didn't surprise me. While you can determine at what track being high is going to help and being low at another track is going to hurt you, there is a reason NASCAR has the height stick and why there is a green area. If you aren't in the green area, then expect penalties to come. It doesn't matter if it happens to us or happens to anybody else. They have been pretty strong in that case."

The Roush Fenway team also argues that the 25-point penalty is too harsh for a driver in the Chase, where only 28 points separate the top six competitors. "At the start of a 10-race series, a 25-point fine is not the same as it would be at the start of a 26-race series," Roush said. "I wonder if they've thought about that. It's a pretty big penalty."

From NASCAR's standpoint, that's a non-starter. "We don't have a sliding penalty scale in NASCAR. We aren't doing that," Pemberton said. And Jeff Burton, one of Roush's former drivers and a championship contender himself, agrees.

"I think we've got to be careful not to minimize penalties," he said. "If I know I'm going to go through tech and it goes through illegally and it's going to be an 11-point penalty, why wouldn't I do that? We have to be careful not to minimize penalties. I had a wise man tell me one time that if we don't make people do the right thing, nobody ever does the right thing. I don't see in other sports, with a minute left to go in the Super Bowl, what had been a 15-yard penalty is now only a 12-yard penalty because there's only a minute left in the game. A penalty is a penalty, and it shouldn't be imposed differently based on what time of year it is."

But to Roush, it comes at the worst time of the year. Edwards still has eight races to make up the difference and win the championship. But to the car owner, it would be a tainted title.

"If we win the championship, I'll be very glad for the sponsors, I'll be glad for our fans, I'll be elated for the drivers," said Roush, who added that NASCAR still has the car in question, and that he hasn't had the opportunity to examine it himself. "But it won't mean as much to me as it would if [NASCAR] didn't do the things they do from time to time. That's just Jack, personally."