The cars of Dale Earnhardt Jr, Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth suffer ‘minor' faults in pre-race Las Vegas inspection.
With the pre-race inspection process in NASCAR hot on the agenda of every Sprint Cup team in the wake of Robby Gordon's 100-point penalty for a seemingly innocent infraction at Daytona it was certainly a surprise when three potential race winners failed their initial trip through tech on Friday at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
NASCAR officials found as yet unnamed faults with the cars of Dale Earnhardt Jr, his Hendrick Motorsport teammate and triple defending Las Vegas winner Jimmie Johnson and the Roush-Fenway Racing Ford of Matt Kenseth on Friday morning. However unlike the case with Gordon at
Daytona, officials did not specify the faults other than saying they were minor infractions.
After going on the record at the start of the season to state that no leeway would be given regarding the Car of Tomorrow chassis template, every team in the garage not least Robby Gordon's #7 outfit, will be keen to find out what the three transgressors failed on.
All three cars were subsequently passed by NASCAR on their second trip through inspection and did not miss any practice time but even if the faults were very minor NASCAR will be under pressure to show consistency in their rulings.
In past seasons NASCAR has made a habit for naming reasons behind tech failures regardless of their nature such as veteran Morgan Shepherd found to his cost four years ago when he presented an onboard fire extinguisher with an out of date sticker.
Robby Gordon will have his penalty appeal heard by NASCAR this week.
