CONCORD, N.C. -- Haas CNC Racing's two qualified Sprint Cup cars for Sunday night's Coca-Cola 600 were confiscated by NASCAR Saturday afternoon at Lowe's Motor Speedway and taken to its nearby research and development center.

The garage had barely opened when the two Haas cars were summoned to NASCAR's template "grid" inspection area; and shortly after, both cars were taken from the track.

NASCAR spokesman Kerry Tharp said the sanctioning body had "an issue with the upper-rear wing mounting points of the 66 and 70 cars."

The curved brackets have a number of holes in the lower portion to offer different wing angles, but only one hole at the top. After initial inspection, in this case on Thursday, the bolts holding the wing in place are "sealed."

Tharp said the Chevrolets -- the No. 66 driven by Scott Riggs, which Thursday night qualified in the 13th position, and the No. 70 that was qualified in the 43rd position by Johnny Sauter -- had an "altered location of the upper wing mounting point" that caused them to fail the grid inspection on Saturday afternoon.

NASCAR issues the main wing elements to the teams at the racetrack each weekend, but the teams install the mounting brackets themselves.

The Haas CNC cars successfully went through the "grid inspection" twice on Thursday, in the initial inspection and before qualifying. The discrepancy arose some time after that.

The Sprint Cup garage area opened at 1 p.m. ET Saturday, and by 1:15 the Haas cars were being checked in the inspection area at the infield end of the garages.

"The discrepancy was brought to our attention, and we addressed it," Tharp said. "The garage is a self-policing area. We follow-up on information we get [and] we're always inspecting racecars. That was the case with this."

When he walked into the garage area later Saturday afternoon, Haas CNC Racing general manager Joe Custer confessed ignorance of many details of the infraction, but he was comfortable with NASCAR's process.

"Honestly, we respect their process and we're just trying to wait and find out where it goes -- what went wrong," Custer said (watch video). "We'll get a report from them, and I guess that will happen next week.

"To my understanding, there was no issue with what happened in qualifying -- it happened [Saturday]. So they took the cars, we respect that, they're going to look at it and tell us what went wrong and what we need to fix and we'll go forward from there."

Scott Riggs

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Johnny Sauter

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Custer said he had yet to be briefed by Haas competition director Matt Borland -- or either the 66 crew chief, Bootie Barker, or the 70's chief mechanic, Dave Skog -- so couldn't comment on whether or not the infraction was inadvertent.

"I'm not a tech guy," Custer said. "I don't know how or why this came about. Again, they're going to step us through it, we're going to listen and move forward."

The Haas teams had to use backup cars for Saturday afternoon's two Sprint Cup practice sessions.

Riggs ran 11 laps in the 45-minute first session and was 40th on the time sheet out of 43 cars. Sauter came out of the garage for the first time with less than 10 minutes remaining in the session, ran six laps and was 43rd on the sheet.

Both cars continued to struggle in the 50-minute Happy Hour practice. Riggs ran 26 laps and was 41st on the time sheet, and Sauter turned 18 laps and was 42nd.

Tharp said the cars would drop to the end of the inside line of the grid for the start on Sunday evening, due to using backup cars, and that NASCAR would announce the results of its R&D Center inspection and any possible penalties next week, per its usual procedure.

Last year, the No. 8 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet that was driven at the time by Dale Earnhardt Jr. was found to have unapproved rear wing mounting brackets in pre-qualifying inspection at Darlington.

The team lost 100 driver and owner points and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. was fined $100,000 and suspended for a total of seven events -- the Nextel All-Star Challenge and six point races.

NASCAR has a history of taking complete cars, usually for gross alterations, but in this case Custer didn't have an opinion on why NASCAR took the complete cars instead of the offending brackets.

"This is something new to us," Custer said. "We've never had this happen. We've never been [in this position]. I respect their rules and apparently they can do this, so we're OK with it."

Custer said it was premature to think of any contingency plan to replace his crew chiefs, if they are suspended.

"We haven't got that far, yet," Custer said with a laugh, but added that his team's driver evaluation would continue for the No. 70 seat that has been filled by a rotation of drivers since Jeremy Mayfield and the team split earlier this season.

Custer confirmed that Jason Leffler, who made the last of 62 career Cup starts in 2005, when he drove the No. 11 car for Joe Gibbs Racing in 19 events, would test one of Haas' cars next week at Pocono Raceway.