Carl Long talks about NASCAR’s lack of fairness

Part-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Carl Long joined Dave Despain in-studio Sunday night on Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain to discuss his recent NASCAR penalty for an oversized Cup engine during NASCAR Sprint All-Star weekend. Long’s appeal was heard but the penalties, including his suspension and $200,000 fine, were upheld.

Dave Despain: You’ve been vocal in criticizing the penalty here. What do you think should have happened? Had you been NASCAR, what would you have done?
Carl Long: “Kept the engine. Some infraction but not near what we got from this deal."

Despain (reading NASCAR statement): Nothing has changed. There have always been severe penalties for attempting to manipulate engine, tires or fuel. Do you have any reaction to that?
Long: “Somewhat. I think that when Richard Petty won the race, he won the race when Bodine did what he did. They were in competition. This was in practice and anyone in the garage area knows my circumstances and why I’m there. The rules are written for what they are but the bottom line is it always has ‘at NASCAR’s discretion.’ There’s a few things – ‘Hey, get this fixed before you come back through tech. Fix this before next week.’ So, I was wrong by expecting to get something out of it. A rule is a rule – that’s what they said. That’s the way it’s got to be. There’s no other game in town, so what do you do?"

Despain: Richard Petty, when he won his 198^th race, I think it was, with a huge motor at Charlotte, got a $35,000 fine, which was a record at the time, and they took away 104 points. So, there’s that. When you appealed it, did you think something was going to happen?
Long: “I expected a reduction. I expected the suspension to be dropped or at least the four weeks like Geoff Bodine and Junior Johnson had. I thought about a lot of things but none of them seemed to happen except the infraction got rolled over to a Sprint Cup Series rule and that was the first time I’d seen that happen."

Despain: They took your original NASCAR suspension, which was 12 weeks, and applied it only to Sprint Cup, meaning you can still work in Truck and Nationwide. How does that change in the suspension affect your life? Does it help?
Long: “A little. It will allow me to go with our Nationwide team but at the same time, if I’m spotting for our Nationwide team, are they going to kick me out of the flagman’s stand if I’m spotting for the Cup team when they change practice sessions? It’s been pretty tough because when I go to the race track, if I was going cheated, I was going to go ‘big cheated’ and if I got kicked out I had every opportunity to load up and go the house and we didn’t. So, here I am and we can’t pay the fine, so we’re just out of NASCAR."

Despain: Does Ernie Elliott have a role in this? Does the engine builder have any responsibility in your mind?
Long: “I tried to see if NASCAR, when I lobbied the hearing, would make engine builders responsible, and that’s not a part of it. Ernie basically cut me a deal – he had a lot of extra Ganassi engines, he cut me a deal on one. Why it’s big and how it got big I have no idea. His part was as much as it overheated, it melted the head gasket into the cylinder head and he said that’s why it got big."

Despain: It was a crew chief’s fine … does it revert to you if he can’t pay it?
Long: “Yes, at the end of the year, section 12 of the rulebook basically states any fines not settled goes back to the owner, which my wife was listed as the owner. So, typically, you could say I’m off the hook. But how do I go back to the race track without my wife when it’s my team?"

Despain: Have they run you off?
Long: “I hope not. David Reutimann has started cheerleading and trying to pool up some money and make things happen for us. This penalty is probably at least 300-percent more than what we make. I don’t know how I go forward with it. You want to race. You want to be a part of it. Yes, I can be in the Nationwide Series garage and so forth but at the end of the year, my license is not in good standing. I’ve never seen anything to compare it to in the past."

[Editor's Note: We have long been critical about the rampant cheating in the NASCAR garage to win a race. It taints the sport, so when we see NASCAR slam its cheaters we view it as a good thing, however, in this case, they went overboard to set an example that oversize engines will not be tolerated because the amount the engine was oversize was so small.]