Jeff Gordon Wants His Suspended Crew Chief On Site Doing His Job
It doesn’t sound as if Jeff Gordon likes the idea of a suspended crew chief actually not being able to do his job during races.
Tuesday NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France said the sanctioning body was looking into the issue of suspended crew chiefs being on site at tracks during Nextel Cup events.
It’s hard to imagine what NASCAR will come up with the police the practice, but clearly it’s an act that undermines NASCAR’s efforts to punish teams for cheating and deter other teams from committing the same violations.
Jeff Gordon seems blind to that point.
On Thursday at Daytona International Speedway, Jeff Gordon talked about the issues surrounding crew chiefs being on site for races while they are under NASCAR suspension.
Jeff Gordon sounded more like a whining child than a 4-time Nextel Cup champion when he tried to pass blame on the media for the story of suspended crew on site coming to life.
Jeff Gordon’s crew chief, Steve Letarte, and Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief, Chad Knaus, are both serving six race suspensions from NASCAR for violations found during inspection prior to the June 24 Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif.
During Sunday’s Lenox Industrials Tools 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway, word spread quickly that Tony Eury Jr., crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr. was serving the final race of his own 6-race suspension from the backstretch hillside at NHIS. It was suspected that Letarte and Knaus, serving the first race of their respective suspensions, were also on site.
NASCAR mandates that suspended crew chiefs cannot enter any areas where a NASCAR license is needed while under suspension, which basically means no enter the garage or pit road.
“What's happened is over the years, communication has evolved to a place where the crew chiefs could still stay in decent communication throughout a weekend whether they are inside the race track or wherever they are,” Jeff Gordon said. “And that's just technology. And it's hard for anybody to stop that. All we did was ask NASCAR what we can and can't do and we were living up to the guidelines that they set. Now with that said, I think the media attention that it got has now hurt us.
"Where we could have quietly had Steve and Chad at the race track, I don't think that's necessarily the case anymore. And a lot of it has to do with whatever the source was or whatever, but they got to talking a lot about being out there. And maybe it was because Tony Eury Jr. was serving his last week, they didn't care so much. It seemed like they were a lot looser about it than we were. That's going to affect us going forward because we don't have those guys here this weekend and I'm not sure what we're going to do going forward."
Finding loopholes in the rule book has long been NASCAR tradition, and suspended crew chiefs being on site for events and in communication with their teams is no different.
But it’s laughable to hear Jeff Gordon trying to throw blame at Eury for blowing the cover of hiding out suspended crew chiefs.
A suspended crew chief should most definitely affect you going forward Jeff. A suspension should hurt a team not prompt a game of dress up your crew chief so nobody recognizes him in the crowd.
But then again, Jeff Gordon is the same driver who whined before Sunday’s race that NASCAR came down too hard on his team. And darned if it didn’t show just how much of a strain his Hendrick Motorsports team was having dealing with the NASCAR sanctions levied against them on Sunday as the former Nextel Cup champion struggled so mightily to that second place finish.
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