Clint Bowyer NASCAR Appeal Set for Wednesday, Odds Not in His Favor

As convinced as NASCAR team owner Richard Childress and his driver Clint Bowyer may be that their team did nothing illegal and doesn't deserve the massive penalty it received last week, the odds of them winning their appeal Wednesday aren't good.

The National Stock Car Racing Appeals Panel, NASCAR's court, has denied 66 percent of appeals (88-of-132) brought before it since 1999, according to statistics released by NASCAR. Only 31 percent of the appeals have had the penalty reduced or completely overturned. And twice, the Appeals Panel actually increased the punishment.

Childress said Friday his 34-year-old team has rarely used the process and is 0-for-3 in appeals as far as he can remember.

"All I'm going to ask for is a fair appeal,'' Childress said. "That's what the appeal is for, to have an appeal board to hear both sides of the story. Hopefully we can present a case enough to know that being bumped pretty severe a couple of times by a tow truck is enough to move it (Bowyer's car) sixth thousandths (of an inch).''

The appeal follows a swift and severe penalty handed down by NASCAR last week after the rear end of Bowyer's New Hampshire Motor Speedway race-winning car was found to be too low following an intense post-race inspection at NASCAR's Research and Development Center -- despite the fact the car passed the more modest trackside post-race inspection.

Having warned the team that Bowyer's No. 33 Chevrolet was dangerously close to failing inspection the week before the New Hampshire race, NASCAR reacted strongly. Instead of being second in the championship following his win at New Hampshire, Bowyer was docked 150 championship points which dropped him to 12th among the 12 Chase drivers prior to Sunday's race in Dover, Del. He is still ranked 12th -- 235 points behind leader Denny Hamlin -- following a 25th-place finish at Dover.

NASCAR also suspended Bowyer's crew chief Shane Wilson and car chief Chad Haney for six races and placed them, along with Bowyer, on probation until Dec. 31. Wilson and Haney were fined $150,000 and Childress lost 150 owner points, although both team members were able to work Sunday's race because the matter is under appeal.

Childress and Bowyer -- defiant and determined during interviews over the weekend -- insist that Bowyer's car was damaged when it was pushed off the track by a tow truck after running out of gas during the victory celebration. And judging by their impassioned comments, this appeal for them is as much to restore integrity to the organization as it is to regain championship momentum.
"I know what we've done to get us here, and we haven't cheated to get here. I can look everybody in the eye."
-- Richard Childress
"After being told that they (NASCAR) were taking the car, we made double-sure before it went to New Hampshire that the car was right,'' Bowyer said Friday. "Who in their right mind, knowing that they're going to take that car, wouldn't have made triple sure that thing was right before it went to the racetrack?''

Added Childress, "I know what we've done to get us here, and we haven't cheated to get here. I can look everybody in the eye.''

And so Bowyer's championship fate rests with NASCAR's version of the justice system. Three people will be drawn randomly from a pool of more than 30 Appeals Panel participants -- all of whom are involved in motor sports in some fashion. Should the three-person panel deny Childress' appeal, his final opportunity is to apply for a hearing with the Chief Appellate Officer.

Ironically, on the day NASCAR announced the Richard Childress Racing fines, the Appeals Panel rendered judgment in its most recent case -- summarily denying an appeal by Nationwide Series team owner Johnny Davis for a penalty imposed after a pit road altercation.

Davis, however, was the last appellant to have a penalty overturned by the Appeals Panel. In July 2009, Davis' crew chief, Randy Hood, was fined $2,500 for using a transmission at Daytona that did not weigh the minimum 80 pounds.

In a hearing on Aug. 4, 2009, the team argued that that the transmission and gear were a standard production design from an approved manufacturer, and that NASCAR had used a different method to determine the weight than the method outlined in its own rule book. The Appeals Panel concurred and rescinded the penalty.

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Spotter's Stand: Joey Logano's Fortunes Improve at Dover

The "Monster Mile" didn't bite Joey Logano nearly as hard this time.

A year after Logano hit the turn three wall at Dover International Speedway and launched his Toyota into an dizzying array of barrel rolls and acrobatic twists, he returned to the fall race at Dover and emerged unscathed and happy with a third-place finish.

But he was still feeling just how physical the one-mile concrete oval can be.

"I'm just trying to catch my breath. That was a long race," Logano said after recording his fourth top five of the season.

Logano, who led a single lap and spent 89 percent of his race in the top 15, started 22nd and moved up early. He was in fifth by the halfway mark.

The second-year driver credited himself with the so-so qualifying position.

"We started towards the back thanks to me in qualifying," Logano said. "The guys did a really good job getting my car good in practice and had a really good car in happy hour."

Logano had a better starting spot for last year's race, his second-career Sprint Cup event at Dover. But after taking the green flag in 11th in 2009, he was involved in a melee on lap 30 that -- through a combination of contact with the outside wall and other cars -- sent his No. 20 rolling in spectacular fashion.

Dramatic images followed of his father, Tom, sprinting to the infield medical center and Joey later emerging from the ordeal unscathed -- save for some trembling in his voice and hands.

"It just really scared the heck out of me," Logano said in 2009. "The biggest thing was, I was fine the whole time. I'm not really sure what happened. I haven't seen a replay, and I'm not sure I want to see the replay. It started rolling, and I was in there thinking, 'Man, just make this thing stop.' "

Avoiding such a fate worked out a little better for Logano on Sunday. Better enough, even, to let him think about a checkered flag.

"I feel like we were close to winning that thing," Logano said. "Came up a little bit short, but either way it's better than last year."

WHO'S HOT: At this point, it's probably criminal to think Jimmie Johnson won't be a factor in this championship.

WHO'S NOT: Matt Kenseth's blown tire after missing pit road during a green flag stop on Sunday put the nail in his Chase coffin.

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Childress, Bowyer Appeal Denied by NASCAR Panel

The National Stock Car Racing Appeals Panel decided Wednesday to uphold a massive penalty issued to Richard Childress Racing (RCR), denying an appeal from the team and essentially ending the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship hopes for driver Clint Bowyer.

The three-person appeals committee -- consisting of former United States Auto Club (USAC) President John Capels, three-time Daytona 500 winning crew chief Waddell Wilson and former driver Lyn St . James -- found the Childress team did not make a compelling case to overturn the six-race suspension handed down to Bowyer's crew chief Shane Wilson and car chief Chad Haney this week.

And it upheld the 150-point penalty given to Bowyer in the drivers standings and Childress in the owners' standings, the $150,000 fines issued to Wilson and Haney and also the probation term (until Dec. 31) handed to both team members and Bowyer.

• Bowyer Penalized 150 Points
• RCR Puts Blame on Wrecker
• Bowyer on Penalty: 'I'm Angry' At the conclusion of a five-hour hearing at the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C., car owner Richard Childress emerged and said, "After so many hours of whatever you want to call this, the ruling stood. I gave them the check (to pay the fines) and an appeal notice to the commissioner. We're very disappointed," according to the Associated Press.

Childress's final appeal will go to the National Stock Car Racing Commission's chief appellate officer, John Middlebrook, a former General Motors executive.

After Bowyer won the Sept. 19 race at New Hampshire, the first race in the Chase to the Sprint Cup championship, NASCAR inspectors determined that the rear end of his No. 33 Cheerio's Chevrolet was too high by a fraction of an inch -- less than the width of a quarter -- and handed out penalties last Wednesday.

Childress brought an accident reconstruction specialist to the hearing, according to the AP, but Dr. Charles Manning of Accident Reconstruction Analysis in Raleigh said the three-member appeals panel was not interested in his presentation.
"After so many hours of whatever you want to call this, the ruling stood. I gave them the check (to pay the fines) and an appeal notice to the commissioner. We're very disappointed."
-- Richard Childress
"They paid no attention to anything I said, which says something about what's going on in there," Manning told the wire service.

The panel's report also pointed to "additional facts which came to light during the hearing." Most significantly, it noted, "both rear hard points, left and right were high and that the rear of the body was offset on the frame.'' The panel did not accept Childress' explanation that this off-measurement was caused when Bowyer's car was pushed into victory lane by a large tow truck, not the result of team members' intentionally skirting the rules.

Further, the panelists agreed the penalities were reasonable for infractions "of this magnitude.''

Bowyer's 150-point penalty dropped him from second to 12th in the Chase standings, but he was allowed to keep the win -- his first victory in two years. He remained in 12th after finishing 25th in the second Chase race at Dover on Sunday and now trails points leader Denny Hamlin by 235 points.

The issues with Bowyer's car first became publicly known last week when the sanctioning body revealed that NASCAR officials had given RCR a part "courtesy call" and part "wake-up call." Inspectors warned the team that Bowyer's No. 33 Chevrolet had been dangerously close to failing inspection following the Sept. 11 regular-season finale at Richmond, Va., where Bowyer had finished sixth.

The legendary team owner Childress immediately responded to NASCAR's findings and insisting there was no cheating and that he would appeal the penalties.

"We feel certain that the cause of the car being out of tolerance by sixty-thousandths of an inch -- less than one-sixteenth of an inch -- happened as a result of the wrecker hitting the rear bumper when it pushed the car into winner's circle,'' Childress said in his statement last week.

At Dover last Friday, Bowyer also angrily denied any wrongdoing by him or his team. But the drama escalated when points leader Hamlin said it was a "crock" that the RCR team didn't get an advantage from the lower rear end, and, he charged, the controversy had been well known in the garage for weeks.

Hamlin's comments led to payback from RCR driver Kevin Harvick, who rammed Hamlin's car several times as practice began last Saturday morning, slightly damaging both cars and leading to a heated exchange between the two drivers in the garage as their teams repaired the cars.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Elliott Sadler Leads Cup Drivers in Crashes and Spins

It's a sad irony that the driver who has had the hardest crash of the year, Elliott Sadler at Pocono in July, is also the driver who has been involved in the most incidents

After getting involved in a four-car crash in turn 2 late in the race two weeks ago at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Sadler chalked up incident number 14 for the year.

That put him in the lead, ahead of Sam Hornish Jr. and Joey Logano, who each have been involved in 13 spins or crashes that prompted yellow flags.

It's time for another installment of our exclusive FanHouse crash and spin roundup. And after 28 races, with eight more to go, while Sadler leads with 14, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kevin Harvick have been involved in the fewest, with two each.

The worst of Sadler's 14, of course, was his full speed, head-on crash into an earthen berm at Pocono on Aug. 1 -- number 12 on his list. Although Sadler was unhurt save for some serious soreness, the engine and most of the front end of his car was torn off by the impact (right). NASCAR officials later told him it was the hardest crash their in-car monitoring devices had ever recorded.

Sadler's year-long record, however, is not so much a reflection of a sudden burst of futility, but more of a steady, relentlessly consistency. Since the last time we checked 13 races ago, Sadler has surged into the lead past Marcos Ambrose, who held the lead at 10. But in the last 13 races, Ambrose got his act together, and only added two more incidents, so he's at 12 after 28 races,

Sadler's year of the crash plague got started right off the bat at Daytona, although that wasn't any surprise, since he was one of 19 drivers involved in incidents that crazy day. Sadler picked up number two at Atlanta, then had two in a single race -- a double -- at Martinsville. He picked up another double at Talladega and then added to his total at Richmond and the first Pocono race.

Sadler tallied his third double of the year at Daytona in July, then added one at Chicago, had the bad wreck at Pocono and chalked up 13 and 14 at Atlanta and New Hampshire.

In addition to leading the stats for yellow flags, Sadler probably holds the lead among drivers in using the phrase "had nowhere to go."

At Daytona in July, Sadler's trouble came with Hornish, who closely trails Sadler in incidents.

"I was trying to stay away from him, but that's just the way my season has gone," Sadler said after the second of his two incidents there, which happened during the green-white-checkered finish. "I just cannot get a break. We were gonna have a solid top seven or eight finish, just trying to make it to the end, but it's just one of those years. It's just very hard to swallow."

Surprisingly, the driver who's had the most incidents in the past 14 races, since we last checked these stats, is Jimmie Johnson. His slump is reflected in the seven incidents he's been involved in since the 14-race mark, which came after the first Michigan race in June.

Johnson only had three incidents in the first 14 events, but his summer spasm of trouble, and seven more yellows, thrust him into double digits with a total of 10. Johnson is one of only 10 regular drivers who has been involved in 10 or more yellow-flag incidents thus far this season. Johnson, who usually finds ways to avoid trouble, even had a rare (for him) double at New Hampshire two weeks ago.

Of particular note is that tied for fourth place, with 12 incidents, is the Red Bull Toyota No. 83. Five different drivers have been involved in amassing that dubious total for the Red Bull team. Brian Vickers had five before he had to step out at the beginning of the summer because of blood clots. Casey Mears filled in for a few races and tallied two more. Road racing specialists Mattias Ekstrom and Boris Said added one each at Sonoma and Watkins Glen respectively, and Reed Sorensen has posted three.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s ho-hum year at least has not been costly in terms of wrecked race cars. He was the only driver without a yellow flag spin or crash after the first 14 races, but finally smeared his perfect record at Indy in late July. He added another at Pocono a week later, but otherwise has had clean races.

Tied with Earnhardt for the lowest, at two, is Harvick, who has been perfect in the last 14 races. His incidents came at Bristol in the spring and first Pocono. In second place for lowest is Matt Kenseth, with three, while Clint Bowyer is third with four.

The guys in the body shop at Richard Childress Racing are having a nice, relaxed, unbusy year in 2010 thanks to the collective skill of RCR's three drivers in staying out of trouble. With Harvick at two and Bowyer at four, Jeff Burton rounds out the three-car outfit with six incidents. That's only a dozen among the three of them, which is fewer than the individual totals of the most trouble-prone drivers.

The FanHouse Sprint Cup Crash and Spin Roundup (after 28 races)

2 - Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick

3 - Matt Kenseth

4 - Clint Bowyer

5 - Robby Gordon, AJ Allmendinger, Scott Speed, Carl Edwards

6 - Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, Jeff Burton, Martin Truex, Jr., David Reutimann

7 - Jamie McMurray, David Ragan, Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle, Paul Menard

8 - Mark Martin, Ryan Newman, Regan Smith

9 - Bobby Labonte

10 - Kurt Busch, Kasey Kahne, Kyle Busch, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jimmie Johnson

11 - Brad Keselowski

12 - Marcos Ambrose, the five drivers of the No. 83 Toyota

13 - Sam Hornish Jr., Joey Logano

14 - Elliott Sadler

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Discover Notre Dame Through "Touchdown Jesus"

There are actually just 100,000 existing graduates of Notre Dame, however you will find millions of die-hard followers that look at their rooting interest in Notre Dame sports some sort of real link with the institution adequately represented inside the book "Touchdown Jesus". Eden, a 1997 Notre Dame grad, creator of "Touchdown Jesus" addresses the actual 2004 adaptation of Notre Dame football thoroughly as well as delivers a important framework to the building problems which lead to the actual ouster regarding third-year-coach Ty Willingham. In 2002, the first season, Willingham guided the football team to an 8-0 start plus had been heralded as the guy who might recreate the glory years associated with Rockne and Parseghian.

As part of his nuanced provider on the 2004 Notre Dame football season in which saw this dismissing of head coach Ty Willingham, Eden, a class of '97 Irish alum, weaves an account staggering with breadth: this culture with the relatively small university where religion along with football have all but joined, the team's substantial and devoted fan base, plus the partnership of spirituality and sheckels. By visiting tailgate parties where Irish supporters amongst beers celebrate Mass, and using postings from Notre Dame fan internet websites along with forums, Eden captures this Notre Dame community's shrinking passion with regard to Willingham, that, on his 2002 hiring, had been considered the "messiah coach."

Though he still incorporates quite a few situations, in the publication, "Touchdown Jesus", several quite humorous, concerning the supporters along with their particular devotion for the squad. Eden's focus is about the pressure that exists among the theocratic administration, the actual sports office, the true alums, and also the fanatic fans. "Touchdown Jesus" Delivers the school continued chaos as a result of its frequent firing involving coaches, or perhaps has a demanding fan base driven the school for taking action? It's probably an unanswerable issue, but Eden provides a thoroughly in depth foundation for debate.

However as the 2004 season advanced with a championship slid even farther out with each game, fans, benefactors in addition to trustees made clear their particular disappointment, and Willingham ended up being terminated. Eden presents several interesting angles on the questionable decision, including the impact on the team's successes with retailing sales so worthwhile an income which the college has trademarked the term "Irish." Neither a letter of adoration to the Alma Mater or a dirge to the fame that has been, this is among the extraordinary football publications that can appeal even to those that have never handled any football.