'Scandal' puts NASCAR exactly where it wants

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- In this oceanfront city dominated by condo towers and Harley-Davidson dealerships, the indignation is flowing faster than the Gulf Stream. Drivers, series officials and even some reporters seem so personally offended by the infractions that have plagued these Speedweeks, you'd think David Hyder had greased the manifold of every car in the media lot.

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Oh lordy lordy, hide the women and children, there's cheating going on in NASCAR again.

Oh, the horror. Oh, the scandal. How dare these crewmen continue to work the gray margins of legality in a sport that draws so much of its colorful history from ... crewmen working the gray margins of legality.

Yes, everyone will sit back and laugh while remembering the days when a Smokey Yunick car would have its fuel drained during inspection, and then drive away on extra gas hidden in the framework. But some tape flies off a hole drilled into a rear deck lid, or somebody misaligns bolts on a rear shock mounting, and suddenly you have Watergate at 185 mph.

Time for some perspective. Restrictor-plate cars are the most specialized in NASCAR, with a tighter inspection process and certain parts used only on the big tracks at Daytona and Talladega. Every year, crew chiefs are busted for flirting with the outside of that heavily policed box. Plenty of them. Prior to the 2001 Daytona 500, NASCAR penalized 18 crew chiefs -- current VP of competition Robin Pemberton among them -- in one day.

But now there's a "scandal," or so it's been tagged by one of the largest media contingents ever to cover a Daytona 500. No matter that similar infractions are unearthed almost every year. No matter that the only difference between this Speedweeks and that of 2001 is a more heavy-handed NASCAR response. The news isn't that teams skirt the rules -- it's that NASCAR is finally hammering them for doing it.

Granted, the illegal fuel additive allegedly found in Michael Waltrip's car is a different animal, the kind of blatant tampering that NASCAR has never had any patience for. But keep in mind that an infraction of that magnitude hasn't been exposed since 2000, when somebody juiced the fuel in Jeremy Mayfield's Penske-Kranefuss car. The penalty then was 151 points, $50,000 and a one-month suspension of crew chief Peter Sospenzo.

Two fuel-additive violations in seven years. Compare that to, say, Major League Baseball, where 12 players were suspended for steroid use in the 2005 season alone. Or the NFL, which is plagued by gun-related incidents. Where's the scandal again? (Continued)