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Location: 3498.51 miles from Tiverton, Ontario (CANADA) Rep Power: 16  | Quote: Originally Posted by JulianW  Using this as a guide I don't think they're really going to worry about $100,000. | I was told once that Home Depot shells out something on the order of 15 mil a year just to have their name and logo on the haulers of Tony Stewart's team; of course with 7 post shakers costing over 3mil and all that wind tunnel time per season a team can burn through millions pretty quick. I read somewhere recently that the Bud shells out about 25mil for the sponsorship on that team. Here is the top 5 biggest cheaters in NASCAR per FOX sports. Quote: 5. Robin Pemberton
A crew chief from 1985 through 2001, Pemberton makes the list for no reason other than the fact that he holds the distinction of being the most monetarily penalized single mechanic in NASCAR history. On the list of NASCAR's top ten biggest fines, Pemberton shows up three different times for a total of $85,000.
The biggest of those penalties came in 1990, when a carburetor spacer plate was found in Mark Martin's car following a win at Richmond in late February. The dime part cost Pemberton 40 large. The team was also docked 46 points, which hurt more than a little when Martin ended up losing the championship to Dale Earnhardt by only 26 points in November.
What's Pemberton up to now? He's on the NASCAR payroll as VP of Competition. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?
4. Ray Evernham
Evernham has only been busted big-time once — officially. During his first title run as Jeff Gordon's crew chief in 1995, Ray was fined $60,000 for using "illegal suspension" parts in the 24 car at Charlotte.
There was another time, however, that happened so fast and so quietly that it got very little attention at the time. Evernham and Gordon won The Winston all-star race in 1997 with a car that was so radical in its chassis design and construction that the team was told to tear it apart and never bring anything like it back to the track ever.
So, what was so radical about it?
Evernham looks confused at the question. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Yeah, right.
Evernham's legacy of experimentation is still alive and well at Hendrick Motorsports, despite the fact that he left the team seven years ago. Chad Knaus and Alan Gustafson are making sure of that. Meanwhile, having all three crew chiefs sent home from Daytona this year is one of the most delicious tales in cheating history. But even that triple play wasn't enough to crack our triumverate of tricksters.
3. Gary Nelson
When Nelson hung up his crew chief clipboard to become NASCAR's top rules enforcer in the mid-1990's, his former competitors were up in arms.
"It's like letting one of the inmates run the asylum," said Darrell Waltrip at the time.
Nelson had made his name as an "innovator" with DiGard Racing and Bobby Allison in the early 1980's and later on the payroll of Hendrick Motorsports, working with Geoff Bodine and DW himself. Nelson was a master of the gray area. During Allison's 1983 title run, NASCAR was so sure that Nelson was hiding extra fuel somewhere in Allison's car it was torn apart twice during the season. Nothing was found.
Nelson is also given credit for one of the most infamous inventions in NASCAR history — a device that emptied lead buckshot hidden inside the roll cage when the driver pulled a lever inside the cockpit, thus lightening the weight of a car during a race. It is a story that has become legendary, even outside of the garage.
During an online chat session a couple of years ago, the validity of the "bombs away" story was asked by a fan to Nelson himself. His response? "My memory is becoming fuzzy on that. Next question."
2. Junior Johnson
What else do you expect from a man who got his start outrunning "revenuers" on the backroads of North Carolina? Johnson won 50 Cup races as a driver and 140 as a car owner. From 1953 to 1995, Johnson and NASCAR stood nose-to-nose waiting on the other to blink first.
Big gas cans, using lighter weight metals during engine construction, cars that pushed the outer limits of legal aerodynamics... they all originated in Wilkes County, North Carolina in Johnson's shop. Leaning on knowledge gained from hauling moonshine through the mountains, his cars always seemed to have a few more horses under the hood than the competition.
In 1966, he showed up at Atlanta with a car that was supposed to be a Ford, but looked like nothing that had ever come out of Detroit. Nicknamed "The Banana" because of its Holly Farms yellow paint scheme, it amazingly still fit into NASCAR's templates. The Banana ran one race before NASCAR told Johnson to never bring it back again.
Twenty-five years later, Johnson and crew chief Mike Beam were suspended for 12 weeks for using an illegal carburetor in Tommy Ellis's car at Charlotte (it was reduced to four weeks after an appeal). And in 1995, Johnson went out in style with a $45,000 fine for using an illegal intake manifold in Brett Bodine's car at Daytona.
You know, Jeff Hammond always says that everything he learned about racing came from Junior. Hmmmmm.
1. Smokey Yunick
The only thing that Yunick did better than bend the rules was use cuss words. A high school dropout, the Daytona Beach resident possessed one of the most brilliant automotive minds of the 20th century, and never hesitated from using it to his advantage on Sunday afternoons.
In his three-volume autobiography published shortly after his death in 2001, he even addressed what he believed was cheating and what was not. In the volume dedicated to NASCAR, entitled "All Right You Sons-a-Bitches, Let's Have a Race", he estimates that by 1970 over half of the NASCAR rulebook was dedicated solely to him. He is also quick to point this out as one of the great accomplishments of his life.
Operating in the gray areas of the rulebook, Yunick says, is not cheating. However, there are four things that he considers "real cheating": 1. Using a big engine. 2. Using a big gas tank. 3. Using expensive exotic materials to save weight. 4. Very expensive aerodynamic rule violations.
"Now, three and four," he wrote. "I consider more 'chicken s---' than cheating... Big engines and big gas tanks, I have no mental tolerance for. What brains does that take?" |
Last edited by slagburn; 05-20-2007 at 09:26 PM. |