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🏎 Price to Pay

🏎 Price to Pay

NASCAR hands out hefty penalties post-Atlanta

Kyle Dager
February 28, 2024

Good morning! We’re starting today off with some epic content thanks to Parker and The Autopian! Here we get to see Parker in his natural habitat… which is apparently drifting 6,000lb, 7-seater SUVs that cost $150,000 through the snow and ice.

Read his full review of the Alpina XB7 here!

Parker’s POV

So Close To Winning

Written by: Parker Kligerman

"The ones ahead of you are really tight on fuel; let's see if we can push them to speed up." And that's what we did. This was the situation as we ran 4th in the last stage of the Atlanta Xfinity race this past Saturday.

Although all of you watching were just seeing a large, seemingly meaningless line of cars going in circles, there was a lot more happening. Wiggles, check-ups, slides—it's basically a crash every corner that just doesn't happen.

Much like a well-plated dish at a high-end restaurant, the dish may seem calm, but the process to get there wasn’t. It’s the same for us. Even though, for a portion of the run as we ran 4th, I had moments of having to get myself refocused, eventually, it was go time. I picked up the energy and started pushing the 3 cars ahead.

“That’s working; you guys are going half a second faster!” We were literally willing the pack to go faster. As we got down to a couple of laps to go, the moves and jockeying started to get aggressive. Me, trying to back our line up, and the leaders not wanting us to get too far behind. All to set up a run.

Then the 98 ran out of fuel. Now we were 3rd, and perfectly placed with my buddy Truex ahead. The move was going to be to back us up, create a run coming to the white off turn four. Side draft, dive as low as possible into T1, and then block like hell down the backstretch.

Right as we were priming that, the caution flew for cars running out of fuel. No worries! I ran 50% throttle for most of the run… We chose the bottom front row for the restart.

The engine was fine the whole lap before the restart, and as we rolled up to the restart zone, green flag! Go! … Suddenly, something was wrong. It sputtered, coughed, and quit - game over.

Over 160 laps of balancing a loose car, fighting tooth and nail for positions that other drivers and teams didn’t want us in.

All for nothing in the end. As we rolled to a stop on pit road, I shut the car and all the systems off and sat there in silence. The third Atlanta race in a row that I’ve been in the top 4 on the final restart.

That’s professional auto racing. You can be so close, yet so far, in less than a second. To explain further - the difference in income from finishing top 5 to 19th is around a 5x increase.

The difference in winning? A 10x increase. It only pays to win in this game.

⚖️ A lawsuit is being planned against F1 by businesses impacted by the Las Vegas GP

🕵️‍♂️ The investigation into Red Bull’s Horner is set to conclude

💸 NASCAR has fined Logano $10k for altering safety equipment

😡 BMW expresses its fury over a penalty received at the Rolex 24

Playing with Penalties

NASCAR's rich 76-year history of stock car racing has seen its fair share of rule-bending, but the introduction of the Next Gen car has upped the ante on penalties. The ethos of "stock" car racing, taking showroom cars to the track, has led to ingenious solutions to enhance speed. Yet, these innovations often lead to significant fines for teams pushing the boundaries.

The most notable penalty recently involved Team Penske's Joey Logano, fined $10,000 for wearing webbed gloves to reduce drag—a clever yet costly trick. The record-breaking fine, however, was a whopping half a million dollars against Hendrick Motorsports and Kaulig Racing for modifying hood louvers, a critical component for car cooling.

"A quality control lapse" led to the largest single fine in NASCAR history: $250,000 against Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe for counterfeit parts. This incident marked a pivotal moment in NASCAR's penalty system, emphasizing the severe consequences of such infractions.

Despite these penalties, teams continue to explore the grey areas of NASCAR's rulebook, leading to a continuous cat-and-mouse game between innovation and regulation. NASCAR's response? A tighter grip on appeals, ensuring that penalties serve as a stern warning against future violations.