Cheating Deliberate In NASCAR

One reason NASCAR is still held in some contempt in professional sports was on display in the sanctioning body's weak-kneed punishments for varied cheating incidents during Speedweeks, notably in the only incident where a truly hard punishment came down, on Michael Waltrip for running an additive in his fuel. There was also Jeff Gordon failing postrace inspection after winning his 150 on Thursday.

Both, however, will race in the Daytona 500.

NASCAR has long said it will weed out and punish cheating, but whenever it gets the chance to make good on such boasts, it falters. The blunt truth is that disqualification is the only way to handle cheating, but NASCAR lacks the courage to go the right route, and has lacked that courage for decades; when Dave Marcis, A.J. Foyt, and Darrell Waltrip had qualifying times disallowed in 1976, it came after NASCAR consulted their legal advisor, who advised to avoid use of the term disqualification. The sport, however, has long needed to outgrow this approach to cheating.

There is also the insulting soap-opera performance in Waltrip's "contrition" regarding the incident. Making it worse is that several drivers stepped up to side with Waltrip and defend him by using the "wrong place at the wrong time" argument. One can debate whether Michael Waltrip knew of the use of this additive - apparantly propylene oxide, a substance commonly used in short track racing, giving extra power for shortish periods and which disappears into thin air after use; one crew chief stated that traces of the stuff would have disappeared from Waltrip's manifold within two hours of being added, and thus would not be found by NASCAR at its R&D shop in North Carolina - beforehand, but we need to stop pretending that such incidents are "accidental." Waltrip got caught, period. I'm not buying that Gordon's postrace infraction was accidental, either, because rigging a car to drop low as happened to Gordon isn't uncommon. There's also the suspicious inconsistency with regard to NASCAR penalties.

Cheating is always deliberate in NASCAR. There is no such thing as accidentally pregnant, so there is no such thing as accidental cheating, and the sport needs to disqualify cheaters as the first and only option.