Competitors are forced to abide by rules, and they must listen to the officials who try to put on a safe and competitive event. However, that doesn't stop drivers and team members from trying to sneak something past them to gain an edge.
"There's not a team out there that doesn't want to be lower, lighter, and faster," says Kevin Triplett, director of operations for NASCAR. "The old saying goes that the guy who finishes second is the first loser, so there's a lot of pressure in this sport. Then again, the amount of cheating just isn't quite as widespread as a lot of people might think."
Needing An EdgeTeams and drivers are constantly trying to push the envelope, trying to find an edge in that so-called gray area where rules can at least be bent if not broken. "That's the way to win because you've got to go to the maximum on everything," says Steve "Red" Cloninger, technical director of the NASCAR Goody's Dash Series. "If they go over the maximum, then we've got a problem."
Wayne Auton, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series director, says teams aren't trying to beat the officials as much as they are trying to beat their fellow racers. "The position of NASCAR is we want the fields as even as we can," Auton says. "The teams are always going to look for the gray areas in the rule book."
And cheating's nothing new. According to Steve Adams, one of two race directors for the USAR Hooters ProCup Series, even the winner of the first NASCAR race held in Charlotte (June 19, 1949) was disqualified in post-race inspection because he had modified his car. "So his Strictly Stock car wasn't exactly Strictly Stock. People bending the rules has been around as long as there's been racing, and it's always going to be like that because people want to beat one another. Creative stuff has been going on forever."
The Joke's On YouWhat teams will do to win can be downright comical. Barry Wray, the NASCAR crew chief steward at Concord (North Carolina) Motorsport Park, recalls a night at Hickory (North Carolina) Motor Speedway when a racer filled his drink bottle full of lead. "What he'd done was he had a sports bottle that should have been filled with water, but what was funny about it was he put it on the far right-hand side of the car, which was a dead giveaway because there was no way the guy could reach over and pick it up.
"That thing was filled up with buckshot lead and I bet it weighed 25 pounds. He was putting the weight on the right side of the car so it would help out with the weight distribution. It was just so funny because when I reached in his car to pick it up, it was so heavy I had to use two hands to pick the thing up."
Wray says while teams can be creative, so too can officials like Cloninger, who later used the buckshot lead to reload his gun.
Cloninger has seen a lot of crazy things in his years of being around racing, including a Street Stock race at Hickory where officials had to tear down the top-five cars. "By the time all was said and done, the fifth-place car ended up winning the race. That was a pretty good one. The first four guys argued about it with us for just a little bit, but not too much."
Sometimes, teams like to have a little fun at the expense of the inspectors. "Yeah, a team pulled this one on me more as a practical joke than anything because they knew I hated snakes," Auton says. "We were getting ready to inspect the truck and I went down to check the carburetor, and the team was behind my back where I couldn't see them and they were laughing because they had put a play snake there that looked just like a copperhead. It ended up costing that team a little bit of money because I threw the carburetor and took off running."
Air It OutAs far as what areas teams will look for to gain a competitive advantage, it boils down to this: If it's on a race car, then a team is going to try to stretch the rule to the absolute limit as it pertains to that particular part.