In case you missed it, Carl Long, who operates his race shop on a shoestring budget to say the very least, was found to have a motor that was roughly one one-thousandth of an inch too big when he tried to enter the Sprint Showdown race in Charlotte a couple of weeks ago. In response, NASCAR came down so hard on the already-struggling owner/driver that it has basically put him out of the sport.
As if the 12-race suspension weren’t bad enough, Long makes his real living working for a Sprint Cup team. Since he is banned from the Sprint Cup garage, he can’t work at his real job at Front Row Motorsports. Instead, he will have to find work in the Nationwide or Camping World Truck Series garage if he wants to feed his family and pay his bills. But that’s not all. In handing down the lengthiest non-drug related suspension in the history of the sport, NASCAR also fined Long’s crew chief Charles Swing a whopping $200,000. For him, that means, pay up or pack your bags because NASCAR won’t take IOUs.
He was hoping an appeal of the penalty would go in his favor on Tuesday, but the penalties were upheld and Long is seeing his NASCAR dreams turn into a nightmare.
Since the ruling, Long has made several statements expressing his displeasure with NASCAR and on some levels, I have to say I agree.
No, I don’t condone cheating but that is not what was going on here. First, the motor in question was 50 horsepower less than the worst Hendrick, Childress or Gibbs engine in the garage. Second, the Sprint Showdown is a non-points race and the motor in question actually blew during practice — it never made it into the race. Third, had Long been cheating he could have loaded up his car, taken the motor and driven back to his race shop without NASCAR ever even looking under the hood of the No. 46 Dodge.
NASCAR went overboard with this penalty and they basically gave Long a death sentence. They have branded him a cheater when that is not the case. They have imposed a penalty that he, nor his crew chief, can afford to pay. And they have suspended him from the Sprint Cup garage so that he can’t make a living.
Maybe I am wrong, but does that sound like a sport where the talk around the media center and the garage is how everyone needs to stick together like family? This is a bunch of BS and NASCAR went too far, in my opinion.
But they seem to be going too far in a lot of areas — take the Jeremy Mayfield incident, for example. NASCAR has branded Mayfield a drug abuser and booted him from the sport indefinitely. That means for life if he doesn’t kowtow to their demands of seeking drug rehab and begging for forgiveness.
Mayfield, however, has a little more money than Long and he is likely to kick the crap out of NASCAR in court. The case was filed late last week and Mayfield’s legal team has already pointed out numerous problems with NASCAR drug testing policy. For one, it doesn’t mesh with federal standards for conducting tests. There could also be a problem with the way NASCAR collects its samples. I don’t think the chain of custody would include dropping your drug test sample off in a bucket that was placed outside the media center but, hey, who am I to judge?
And speaking of judges, on Tuesday, NASCAR was successful in getting Mayfield’s case moved out of state court in Mecklenburg County, N.C., and into federal court. Mayfield’s case was supposed to be heard the next day and a ruling in the case could have put him back in the car this weekend, but NASCAR legal maneuvering has made that a moot point. Additionally, unless Mayfield’s attorney Bill Diehl fights the change of venue, the case will be set on the federal track and could take longer.
As I wrote last week, Diehl is shrewd and very confident, so this fight will get really interesting before all of this is over with. And in case anyone is wondering what drug Mayfield had in his system — it was amphetamines. NASCAR won’t tell you but Mayfield’s attorneys let the court know that their client is taking Adderall. I did some checking and Adderall is comprised of amphetamine salts and is prescribed to patients for the treatment of ADHD. By the way, Adderall increases alertness. I would think that would be a good thing on the racetrack. I can think of a few drivers that might need medication for ADHD, but that is another story for another day.
As of now, the Mayfield vs. NASCAR saga will play out in federal court and I will keep you updated on the fight at kickinthetires.net.
In other NASCAR news, this one kind of flew under the radar and really didn’t get much play — NOT. That’s right, Tony Eury Jr. is out and Lance McGrew is in as the new crew chief for the sport’s most popular driver. I mean, come on, ESPN broke into its newscast and showed Dale Earnhardt Jr. walking onto pit road at Dover as it told of the change. This thing was covered to death over the weekend and its still the talk of Sirius Satellite Radio.
But what I liked was Kyle Busch’s response in saying that whatever the problems were, they could never have been blamed on Junior. Obviously, a crew chief has to take a fall because he can’t seem to get to Victory Lane.
What was funnier still was something that I know the outside world missed and that was Dale Jr. having a chat with Busch prior to the driver’s meeting.
According to my friends in the NASCAR garage, Junior walked up and sat beside Busch before the drivers’ meeting and said something in his ear. The one-way conversation lasted very briefly and then Junior got up and walked away.
Wouldn’t you have loved to be a little birdie listening in?
Well, that is about it for this week. Check out kickinthetires.net for major NASCAR news as it happens throughout the weekend and into next week. New pictures should be posted soon, also.
