NASCAR increasing inspection penalties
NASCAR's senior vice president of competition told Motorsport.com last week that the sanctioning body was upping the ante if the teams did not make a better effort at expediting the inspection process.
At Kentucky Speedway on Friday, 11 teams discovered that Miller wasn't making idle threats.
"Practice holds in Happy Hour – which is something that we'll potentially move to – probably will get their attention a little bit," Miller said. "Putting some penalty on the tires that the cars don't make it out with is on the table and that will get their attention.
Bootie Barker, the crew chief of the #13 Germain Racing team and car chief Billy Plourde lost their hard cards for three weeks for post-qualifying inspection body modifications. Crew chief Drew Blickensderfer, of the #43 Richard Petty Motorsports team, lost his hard card at Michigan. Jason Ratcliff added his name to the list on Friday along with his team engineer after failing inspection four times at Daytona.
The #20 car of Matt Kenseth was forced to sit on pit road for 30 minutes until NASCAR released the driver. Kyle Busch, whose #18 team made three attempts through inspection at Daytona, was also held. Erik Jones, Martin Truex Jr., Ricky Stenhouse Jr., also endured 30-minute practice holds in Happy Hour at Kentucky Speedway on Friday. Motorsport