NASCAR issues penalties

NASCAR issued penalties Tuesday to the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Nationwide Series team for a bodywork violation at the series' most recent race at Darlington Raceway, where its driver Kyle Busch scored the victory.

Crew chief Adam Stevens was fined $10,000 and placed on probation until the end of the year. Car chief Christopher Landis was also put on probation for the same duration. The infractions involved the amount of body filler found on the nose during inspection early in the race weekend.

"I think the NASCAR officials actually helped us this weekend by making us change the nose," Busch told NASCAR.com after dominating Friday night's race for his 56th career Nationwide victory. "They put the downforce back in it. These guys were trying to slick it up too much.

"We had too much Bondo in an area to cover up the seam … between the two halves of the nose. They just didn't like the amount of Bondo we had on it, so it was almost a disadvantage where it was. They made us change it. No big deal."

Stevens acknowledged his crew was at fault for the infraction.

"It was just an oversight from the shop," he said. "We had a little bit of damage on this car when we raced it at Fontana. It's just typical race repair and the area in question just had a spot of Bondo on it. We just didn't do a good enough job checking the templates like we always do, and that's shame on us."