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LONG POND, Pa. -- Three NASCAR Sprint Cup Series crew chiefs aren't working with their teams here at Pocono Raceway this weekend after being suspended for violations stemming from last week's race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Slugger Labbe understands what each is going through.
Labbe, crew chief for driver Austin Dillon and the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, was suspended for three races for an infraction last season while working with Circle Sport Racing.
"The hardest thing to deal with, and you have to do it, is if you try to run practice from the shop, it will destroy your team," Labbe said Friday morning at Pocono. "You're better off to trust your people that you have in place and let them do their job."
On Wednesday, NASCAR officials announced the suspensions of Brian Pattie (Roush Fenway Racing No. 16 Ford), Tony Gibson (Stewart-Haas Racing No. 41 Chevrolet) and Randall Burnett (JTG Daugherty Racing No. 47 Chevrolet).
Pattie, crew chief for driver Greg Biffle was suspended for two points races (Pocono and Michigan) for a body design that either had not been submitted to NASCAR for approval or did not comply with the approved body designs. In addition to his suspension, he was fined $50,000 and placed on probation through Dec. 31. The No. 16 team also lost 15 championship driver and owner points as a result of the infraction.
Robbie Reiser, general manager at RFR and a former crew chief, will serve as interim crew chief for the team this weekend at Pocono as well as next week at Michigan International Speedway.
Gibson and Burnett received one-race suspensions. Each was fined $20,000 and also placed on probation through Dec. 31 for lug nut violations.
Team engineer John Klausmeier will fill in for Gibson while competition director Ernie Cope has been tabbed to fill Burnett's role.
"I think the way racing is right now, with the big organizations you've got plenty of depth to cover that in a lot of different ways," Reiser said. "Plus the teams are structured a lot differently than they used to be. It's not a one-man band anymore; it's a total team effort. There are a lot of people that pick up in the areas that one person does. It's really invisible in a way."
Technological advances have made it possible for crew chiefs to remain in constant contact with their teams while serving suspensions. They can monitor lap times and interact with the teams almost as easily from home as they can from the track.
Because of that, NASCAR officials say they continue to monitor how technology has impacted suspension penalties.
"As (it) has changed, the old policy of you're suspended and you can't be (at the track) has probably served its time and I think as we go forward now -- obviously we never want to have to suspend someone -- we're going to have to look at the technologies," Steve O'Donnell, Vice President of Competition and Racing Development for NASCAR, told SiriusXM NASCAR earlier this year.
"It's very difficult to police but you could have almost a no-contact rule; again that would be hard to police but we could put that in place."
A suspension, he said, "should be just that.
"It shouldn't allow someone to just crew chief a car from a different location."
Reiser won 17 premier series races as a crew chief, 16 with driver Matt Kenseth and one while serving in an interim crew chief role with driver Carl Edwards .
"We've been in this situation before and we'll be in this situation again with the way they've got the thing structured," he said. "Everybody just basically runs the team the same way, you really don't see any difference."
Labbe said he will not be at Michigan next Friday and Saturday.
"My daughter's graduating," he said. "I'll come up Sunday morning. I've got to trust the people that I have in place. They know how I operate. They know our system. It would be foolish for me to sit at home and try to call practices from the shop.
"You can't see everything, you can't look at everything.
"They're going to race whether you're here or not, right? That's the best piece of advice I've ever gotten."