While NASCAR officials did not assess any penalties to the Cup Series teams after the race at Martinsville Speedway last weekend, they did take two cars to their R&D Center for further inspection.

After the race at Atlanta Motor Speedway in March, NASCAR also took the number six Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing car driven by Brad Keselowski to their R&D Center that later resulted in a major penalty for RFK Racing and Keselowski.

NASCAR senior vice president of competition Scott Miller elaborated on what took place to warrant the L2 penalty that cost RFK $100,000 and 100 points; as well as, a 100 point loss for Keselowski and a suspension for Keselowski’s crew chief.

Under the current rule book, the some 30 parts issued by NASCAR or one of its single source suppliers must be used as it with no modifications. 

According to the report, a tail panel was modified; which is against the rules.  Miller spoke on the ruling saying, “the repair policy is very straightforward.   Any repair that’s done is to bring the part back to the original specification. On this part, that was not adhered to. There are body mounting landings that are part of the rear fascia that weren’t brought back to the original specifications. That’s a key design feature of the part. The repair policy was not followed. That’s really what it comes down to. A critical dimension of the part was altered.”

When NASCAR began the design process for what is now the Next Gen car, they relied heavily on input from the drivers themselves and team owners.

Miller added, “as we worked through what the NextGen car was going to be over that long journey with the teams, one of the things was the single-source parts had to be strictly enforced or we’ll get right back to the place where we were with the other car — of constant development.  A strict deterrence model was asked for by the folks in the garage, and it was our job to do that.”

When the Next Gen car was introduced, NASCAR announced that the penalties for the new car would be more severe than those for previous versions of the Cup Series cars.