"I've seen lead shot in the framerails and in the cool box that's supposed to be used to blow cold air onto the driver," Cloninger says. "Of course there are always drivers and teams who are going to try to mess with their tires and the height of their cars; that's probably the most common thing we catch. Plus, our teams are a little more creative when it comes to lowering their cars when we race at tracks like Daytona."
Inspectors say teams often try to find ways to get more air into the carburetor, the easiest way to gain a little extra horsepower. "The cheapest horsepower you can find is getting clean air into the carburetor," Wray says. "What you'll find is teams trying to cheat up the airbox. They'll taper it down and cut it short at the opening of the grille so air can come up and over the shroud of the car.
"Some guys, instead of putting flat crush panels where the front firewall is at, they'll round the crush panels off so where the air comes into the wheel area it creates an air disturbance. That disturbance of air will help you up around the breather of the carburetor. The way the rules are written in our Late Model Stock division, all the air that comes through the front of the car has to come from the radiator itself. So if a guy gets caught doing that, what he was trying to do was gain a little more horsepower."
Teams often look to stretch the limits on the body of their car. Wray says he always looks at the length of the nose of the car to make sure it is wider than the outer tread of the tires. "From the Late Model Stocks to Winston Cup, no part of the car can extend out past the sidewall of the tire," Wray says. "When you're standing behind a car, the right and left side of the car is supposed to look exactly the same. If you're standing directly behind a car and you can see a decal on the quarter-panel on one side but not the other, that's a dead giveaway. If you're going to cheat like that, you definitely don't want to add a lot of decals to it so the officials can see it."
Some of the top NASCAR drivers have been guilty of trying to gain an unfair advantage during their short-track days. Adams recalls a night when he was the chief steward at Hickory and former Busch Series driver Mike Dillon was getting ready to qualify for a Late Model race. "Everybody would get ready to qualify by taking some bite out of the car or messing with the stagger. I was sitting in the tower, and I remember Mike was using adjustable struts for the nose (body work) so he could widen it out or narrow it up when he needed to."
Adams also has a story on Andy Houston, a native of Hickory who grew up racing at his hometown track before racing in the Busch Series, Truck Series and Winston Cup Series. "We caught Andy with a 25-pound clipboard in his car one night," Adams says. "It was just a little old clipboard, but the thing was filled full of lead. When his team was going across the scales, they'd take the clipboard and write down the weight, then put the clipboard on the top of the car. After that was done, they'd put the clipboard on the inside of the car on the right-hand side."
Exploring The Gray AreasInspectors know what to look for because most were previously on race teams themselves and may have tried such creativity. "Ninety percent of the officials came from a racing background and that makes a very big difference, because they know the cars and what to look for," Cloninger says. "If you get a new guy in there without that experience, it's going to take several years to train him to where he can really do his job."