Jimmie Johnson’s pit stall penalty overturned by NASCAR appeals panel
Jimmie Johnson won’t have the last pick of pit stalls at Michigan.
Johnson’s No. 48 was given written warnings for violations in consecutive races. Before the race at Dover, the team was penalized with a P1 penalty, the lowest-level infraction in NASCAR. The penalty? The last pick of pit stalls for a race.
The team appealed the penalty (which would have gone into effect at Dover without an appeal) and on Wednesday, a NASCAR appeals panel overturned it.
The reasoning, according to a release from NASCAR, is that while warnings themselves for technical violations are not appealable, the penalties given because of them are.
Here’s what the release said:
• Warnings are not appealable. NASCAR acted correctly in issuing a P1 penalty after the second warning.
• But, the panel must also decide if there has been a violation of the rules (Section 14.15.1.b).In the hearing, there was a preponderance of evidence presented that the side skirt violation which led to a warning did occur.
• There was conflicting evidence about the inspection violation which led to the second warning instead of preponderance
• Since only one of the two violations were shown by a preponderance of the evidence, the panel rescinds the P1 penalty.
According to NBC, a NASCAR spokesperson was not made available after the hearing.
Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus, who attended the hearing with owner Rick Hendrick and car chief Ron Malec, said the appeal was an opportunity to understand NASCAR’s new penalty process. The sanctioning body has reshaped its penalty system, adding in written warnings and different levels of violations.
“If you look at the way warning schedule is, and the way the penalties can start to accumulate over a period of time, we needed to understand the methodology behind that, and we have a better understanding of that now,” Knaus told NBC. “I think that with all the teams and NASCAR, we’re all going to have some more conversations in the future about how the warnings are applied and can be contested.
“That was the big reason we’re here. We need to get in here and understand the format, the system and thankfully, we have a system like this. I think it’s great that NASCAR is willing to have an open forum to where we can get together, chat and have a face to face conversation about it and try to get some clarification.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
