As The Engine Revs - Part XXVIII

In our continuing saga of that thing called "NASCAR"...

Carl Edwards, hoping to be the first driver to win both the Cup and the Busch series, hits a bit of a roadblock along the way.  Although he won the crash filled race at Dover, his car failed the post race inspection.  He still gets to keep his victory, but it's almost a certainty that he will be penalized in some way.

 "The car was found to be too low in the right-rear," NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said. "The height exceeded NASCAR's tolerances.

"This is not considered a Car of Tomorrow-type penalty. There's no evidence of manipulation of the integrity of the structure of the car. It's a heights-inspection infraction."

Of course, Edwards is keeping his fingers crossed that it will be discovered that it was some post-race bumping by his teammate Greg Biffle - who finished 2nd - was the cause of the problem.   "The worse case would be 25 points, the right-rear being low -- any engineer or crew chief in the garage will tell you that's the last thing you want," Edwards said. "You want the right-rear to be high.

"The only thing I can think of is at the end of the race, Greg came up and gave me a couple of love taps to say 'good job, good race' and hopefully they find that that bent the tail of the car down a little bit. There are some braces bent under the decklid so hopefully that's what it is."

It cost Kyle Busch 25 and Johnny Sauter 25 points each, and their crew chiefs $25,000 earlier this year when it happened at New Hampshire.  While 25 points may not seem like much, at this point it is critical.  That would drop Edwards in the Nextel Cup standings from fourth to sixth.  Ouch!

Just another note on Dover - only 6 cars finished on the lead lap.  In fact, if there had been one more wreck it was speculated that NOBODY would have been left on the lead lap!  (Wait, I don't think that's possible...)

Race for the Chase Standings as of Dover

                                                 
RANK     DRIVER          POINTS     BEHIND
1            Jeff Gordon          5340      Leader   
2            Tony Stewart       5338         -2   
3            Carl Edwards       5337         -3   
4            Jimmie Johnson   5336         -4   
5            Kyle Busch          5330       -10   
6            Clint Bowyer        5322        -18   
7            Martin Truex Jr.    5294        -46   
8            Jeff Burton           5265        -75   
9            Kevin Harvick       5225       -115   
10          Matt Kenseth       5224       -116   
11          Kurt Busch          5189        -151   
12          Denny Hamlin      5182        -158