'Room of Doom'

Inspection works to keep level playing field on track

While pushing the limits of NASCAR's rule book is acceptable, exceeding it isn't. Jonathan Ferrey/Allsport

By Denise N. Maloof, CNNSI.com

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Think of interminable doctor visits, long license-plate renewal lines. Both mirror the stress of a NASCAR Winston Cup inspection, and at Daytona International Speedway, it's an experience that compares to expectant fatherhood.

"Yes, it is your baby," said crew chief Chad Knaus of rookie Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet. "I love these race cars more than anything. That's probably why I'm still single."

"I call it the Room of Doom," said Richard Childress, owner of Richard Childress Racing.

Negotiating inspection is a sport of its own during Speed Weeks. Cup officials opened for business at 7 a.m. Thursday and didn't extinguish the lights until 9:30 that night. Teams routinely needed more than one trip through the process, and Johnson's crew didn't get their small round, orange seal of approval until 30 minutes prior to Friday's first Cup practice.

"I guess it's always that way," Johnson said. "The crew chiefs are doing their jobs. Mine in particular with Chad Knaus. We spent a little extra time in the inspection room, but everything turned out OK."

"That's the way they like it," Knaus said. "They like for you to work on something."

Winston Cup director John Darby calls the season's first inspection its most important -- and the most painful to competitors and inspectors alike. In his first year in Winston Cup after three years as the Busch series director, Darby says pickiness is an absolute.

"We're putting as much effort as we can into the inspection process here for all the reasons," Darby said. "Because of it being the biggest event of the year and this kind of sets the stage for the whole season. And obviously the little things make big differences at a speedway like Daytona and Talladega. The intensity of the inspection is very high, but the intensity of the competition is also very high. The two kind of marry up somewhere in the middle."

"John Darby brought a lot of his guys over from the Busch series and they're pretty tough," said Slugger Labbe, Michael Waltrip's crew chief, adding that his team needed two inspection trips. "But that's good. I don't mind it."

Darby said some teams need "six or seven trips through the whole line" to earn their orange stickers. Officials wielding templates, measuring devices and sharp eyes examine every inch of each car, and its insides. And if they find something that doesn't measure up, they pull that car out of line and send it back to the garage.

"You would expect that every time it should get a little easier," Darby said. "And we'll see as the week goes on. As the hours start closing out and desperation starts setting in, that's always something that can drive it to the next level."

Sunday night's announcement that Ford spoilers will be lowered another quarter-inch means another change to double-check in "tech." And while pushing the limits of NASCAR's rule book is acceptable, exceeding it isn't.

"Actually, in the amount of illegal parts that we've confiscated as a way of putting a barometer on how the week's gone, I think we're at an all-time low in terms of parts and pieces that we've actually taken from teams," Darby said. "Which is good. A perfect day of inspection, the parts table would be empty."

Even when it's not, a sense of humor sometimes prevails.

"There's a good part of it that are probably just errors," Darby said. "Some of it is a piece of metal under a car that says, 'Hi, how are you,' that the teams may be having a little fun."

Those who have been caught will be chastised, but whether it's in the form of fines, suspensions, or a stiff talking-to, remains to be determined. Darby says officials usually wait until after the Daytona 500 to assess punishment, but not if a team excels with a hot part.

"We don't have to wait," he said. "We choose to wait just because to muddy the waters right now -- if it was a big infraction, something was found on a car that qualified very well, it was a major violation of the rules, that would be dealt with immediately because it could affect the rest of the weekend."

That's exactly what happened last year. NASCAR handed out $40,500 in fines, plus two suspensions, to 18 crew chiefs the Monday following the Budweiser Shootout. The worst infraction belonged to Hendrick Motorsports: Jerry Nadeau had grabbed the outside pole during first-round qualifying, but had to re-qualify after inspectors discovered fuel cell and suspension violations. His crew chief, Tony Furr, was fined $12,500 and suspended for four races. The other suspension belonged to Jason Leffler's crew chief, Kevin Cram.

"Most of the pieces found in the pre-race on Thursday on opening day, they have not been used in competition and that's a big difference," Darby said. "If the competitor has a part that's outside the rule book and we find it on Thursday, we don't like it and we understand it's still outside the parameters of the rule book, but when you look at in the light of, has it wronged another competitor, at that point, no."

Inspection stress isn't limited to the Cup garage. The Truck series garage opened Sunday, followed by the Busch series garage Monday. Truck series spokesman Owen Kearns said NASCAR inspectors began their day at 8 a.m. Sunday in the garage, and ended it at 9 p.m., three hours after the scheduled closing. They cleared 31 of the 47 trucks, most of which required two inspections. All trucks were cleared before Monday morning’s first practice.

Busch series director Brian DeHart said Monday's initial 48-team inspection went surprisingly well. "It's been a very smooth day for an opening day," he said.

"We have zero tolerance of the templates down here because a 16th of an inch can mean two miles an hour," Kearns said. "And we like everybody to be on a level field."

"The best way a crew chief explained it to me," Darby said. "He said, 'You know, I went through there two trips. And he said it's a lot like buying a house when they accept your first offer, you think you might have offered them too much money.' Well, it's the same kind of deal."

 

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