NASCAR Xfinity Series Managing Director Wayne Auton explains the discrepancy in the splitter Stewart-Haas Racing used on the No. 00 car ahead of the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Michigan International Speedway earlier this month.
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00:00 We do it at Michigan during pre-race inspection, the initial inspection we go
00:04 through, the second inspection area that we do, we do engines and safety first and
00:08 then they go over to our chassis platform.
00:11 And our NASCAR officials and the NASCAR Xfinity series, they go underneath the
00:16 cars from front to rear and the discrepancy on the splitter is everybody runs the
00:21 same piece in the garage area.
00:25 It's a piece that they run at down force racetracks and then we also have a
00:29 splitter that they run at super speedways so everybody runs the same part number.
00:34 And the rule is very clear that no rounding of any edges.
00:39 So if you look at this is the top half of the splitter, you can see how square the
00:44 edges are and then the bottom half of the splitter, you can obviously see that it
00:50 has been rounded.
00:52 And the rule is very clear that you cannot do that.
00:54 And that is 14.4.3 splitter except for super speedway events, splitter part
01:02 number is in the rule book that everybody has to run.
01:05 And then in the judgement of NASCAR officials, the splitter is worn excessively
01:09 from 0.46 and specified replacement splitter may be required.
01:17 This is obviously a brand new splitter that the team had on the car and rounding
01:22 of any edges, the splitter will not be permitted.
01:24 So the rounding of the bottom edge of the splitter, whether it's an advantage,
01:29 we don't look at it that way, what we look at is everybody is expected the same
01:33 way in the garage area.
01:35 And our NASCAR officials done a great job of finding this.
01:38 It's unfortunate that the team got caught up in it.
01:41 But we assess a level one penalty and those penalty options are 10 to 40 points,
01:47 1 to 10 playoff points and 10,000 to $40,000 and also we could have suspended a
01:54 crew member which we felt the violation occurred that the penalty we assessed was
01:58 appropriate for this penalty that we put out.
02:02 We went pretty much middle of the road on all the penalty options that we had.
02:06 Our message to the teams is number one that our NASCAR officials are doing a great
02:10 job so that they know that every race car is getting inspected the same way.
02:13 That's what we really emphasize to our group.
02:17 Eric Peterson leads our inspection process and he has gentlemen and ladies underneath
02:23 the cars at all times every week and we make sure that every car is checked to the
02:28 best of our ability the best way that we can.
02:30 Just like we're here at Watkins Glen this weekend.
02:33 But was it an advantage?
02:35 We have no idea.
02:36 But we know that it did not meet the rule and we took action.
02:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]