The Atlanta Cup race had a controversial start after it was announced that two-time NASCAR Cup champion Joey Logano would be serving a pass-through penalty on the first lap of the race. He was penalized after getting caught using gloves that were modified to get an advantage. This violated the SFI specialization.
This has produced a lot of rumors in the garage over how NASCAR might’ve caught the No:22 Penske Racing driver. Joe Gibbs Racing veteran Denny Hamlin has given his thoughts on the controversy via his podcast. He believes it wasn’t NASCAR that directly got wind of the cheeky move from Penske, and it would’ve been a whistle-blower.
Hamlin used some colorful words to explain what could’ve led to the penalty of Logano. The 23XI Racing co-owner pointed out that there are a lot of snitches in the garage who, as part of self-policing, share any illegal move they could spot, employed by rivals. They then report it to the race tower.
I’m willing to say there was a whistleblower. These teams tell on each other, for sure. For those of you who don’t know, teams — they call it a self-policing sport because when we’re sitting next to each other and watching videos of other cars — the NASCAR Cup Series is full of snitches. I mean, all over the place. Hamlin said via Action Detrimental.
What happened after the snitches informed the race tower about the infraction?
Hamlin pointed out that once the race tower knows about the infraction, the information is conveyed to John Probst or Elton Sawyer, the senior VPs of NASCAR, who will then guide the marshals to take a closer look at the teams in question.
They tattle tell. If they see something that someone is doing that is illegal or skirting the rule, they’ll tell the tower right away. They’ll send that to [senior vice president of racing innovation] John Probst or [senior Vice President of competition] Elton Sawyer and be like, ‘Oh, look at that.’ And they’ll say, ‘Oh, we’ll look into that.' Logano added.
Self-policing, when it is done on merits, is really good for sports. This is because of the fact that the team would restrain themselves from taking illegal routes to success. But if it goes beyond the limit, it can affect the natural innovations that should happen.
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