KBM penalised for second ride height violation
NASCAR has issued a fine and probation to the Kyle Busch Motorsports team, after their winning truck failed a post-race technical inspection for the second race in succession in the Camping World Truck Series.
Race officials had previously given crew chief Eric Phillips a $5,000 fine and docked the #51 six points in the owners championship for failing a ride height inspection at Kentucky Speedway after Kyle Busch drove it to victory.
This weekend it was 18-year-old Erik Jones at the wheel of the winning truck, but the #51 once again failed post-race inspection on the same grounds. The truck had been too low at the front at Kentucky, and too low at the back at Iowa.
Under NASCAR's new formalised system of penalties which include escalation for repeated offences, Phillips has this time been handed a $6,000 and placed on probation through to the end of the year, while the team loses ten points in the owners championship.
The #51 still leads in the team owners standings, but its margin over the #88 ThorSport Racing truck driven by Matt Crafton has now been reduced from 38 to 28 points as a result of the latest penalty. Jones also loses ten driver points, but Busch did not as he is not eligible for driver points in the Truck Series.
Phillips insisted that different issues had been behind the infractions at Kentucky and Iowa: "The Kentucky deal is completely a different thing," he said. "We were probably pushing tolerances there, but that's our job to do, but here it wasn't that, by no means. We'll just have to figure it out."
Team owner Kyle Busch said that they were working to get to the bottom of the repeat problem with the truck's set-up.
"We're trying to get it the best we can," he insisted. "It's our front end set-up stuff. People know what we're running, they know what we're doing. It's just a matter of trying to get it fine tuned a little bit more where we can start higher and maybe maintain a little bit better height if they don't change the rule.
"There's a tolerance or a window of I think a quarter inch that you're allowed in green," Busch explained. "We start at the low side of that because that's the way our setup is, so it doesn't really give us that much space to go through the yellow which I think is three-eighths of an inch or so.
"The Nationwide cars, I think that tolerance is a half-inch. They widened it and guys are not having issues now because the tolerance is bigger," he added. "Our trucks still seem to be having that issue just because the tolerance window wasn't opened up as what Nationwide is."
Ride height requirements were removed from the new Sprint Cup Series rules package but remain a part of both the Nationwide and Truck Series.
