Nextel Cup points leader Jeff Gordon will go through this weekend at New Hampshire International Speedway, and the next five events on the schedule, without crew chief Steve Letarte at the track with him.

That Letarte and fellow Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Chad Knaus were suspended by NASCAR came as little surprise after Jeff Gordon’s team and his teammate Jimmie Johnson’s team were found with body modifications prior to Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif.

NASCAR announced earlier this week that Letarte and Knaus would be suspended for six events and that each team would be docked 100 points in the driver and owner standings along with handed $100,000 fines.

It was a punishment that lined up perfectly with the one given to Dale Earnhardt Inc. when car driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr. was found in violation of the rules earlier this season at Darlington Raceway.

NASCAR had promised before the season that violations involving the new Car of Tomorrow would be severe. The Car of Tomorrow, which is being run this weekend at NHIS, was run at both Darlington and Infineon.

But Jeff Gordon doesn’t like the fact that his team not only got the sanctions it did this week, but was also punished at Infineon immediately after the violations were discovered on the front fenders of both Jeff Gordon and Johnson’s cars during the initial inspection of the race weekend in Sonoma.

Jeff Gordon and Johnson were both held out of practice on the Friday before the Toyota/Save Mart 350 and were not allowed to participate in qualifying. Each team was allowed to start in the race at the tail end of the field.

“I'm blown away to be honest,” Jeff Gordon said Friday at NHIS. “To know what other penalties that have been served with this new car, obviously we know that they're severe and they're making a point very clear. I felt like we've gotten a more severe penalty because of the lack of practice and not being able to qualify last week. I'm extremely in disappointed in NASCAR and the decisions that they've made but I will say we're crystal clear going forward. I just think if you would have asked any crew chief in this garage area prior to last week if that had occurred to them what they thought the penalty would be, I guarantee you they would have never have come close to the penalty that was served. It is what it is though. We're ready to move on and put it behind us and get back to trying to win races and get those bonus points and get ourselves solidly in the Chase."

Hendrick Motorsports announced Thursday that they would not appeal the penalties given by NASCAR.

"I think there's a couple reasons for that,” said Doug Duchardt, vice president of development for Hendrick Motorsports. “The first one is as we went through this and some of the things became more clear to us as far as what NASCAR's tolerance on their data was and it wasn't as clear to us before last Friday as it is now. And the second thing is that we do feel it's too severe but as NASCAR said that the precedent for this car has been new and we just felt like rather than prolong it, prolong the discussion around this, we'd just put it behind us, focus on moving forward and get the suspension over with as soon as we could so we could focus on the Chase.”