Tony Stewart urges NASCAR to keep tabs on the penalty system, warns it about the possibility of race fixing
Tony Stewart’s team, SHR, was hit with this season's biggest monetary and point penalty.
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Tony Stewart (Credits: @shr/ Twitter)
Three times NASCAR Cup series champion Tony Stewart had some unique views regarding the increased sanctioning by this apex body in 2023. NASCAR has given close to $1 million worth of sanctions this season and has established its zero-tolerance policy for the future. But the Stewart Haas Racing co-owner believes there is the possibility of the sanctions being misused.
Before NASCAR embraced the technologies, it was track officials with a stopwatch giving out penalties. Stewart, pointing to the old system, said that in the past, the officials used to take revenge if they had any issue with the drivers or teams by giving pit-speeding penalties. He added that the R&D center nowadays is a place for NASCAR to settle the scores they couldn’t do on Sunday.
But the biggest worry Stewart has is not regarding the penalties; it’s about the possibility of inappropriate application of sanctions to support sports betting during races. He said that NASCAR had put itself in a tough situation regarding monitoring these sanctions. To keep everything the France family has built over 75 years intact, intense scrutiny of the system is required.
“They’ve backed themselves in a corner with the greed to the gambling side. They can’t call somebody for a pit road speeding penalty if they didn’t commit the act. They can’t control that… How do you control everybody then if you’ve taken that ability away during the race?… You do it at the R&D Center after the races are over,” Stewart said.
“If somebody’s ruffling your feathers, that’s where they’re going to get you. However, don’t construe every penalty as settling a score…I think it’s important that they do keep aspects of this in check. You can’t lose control of that. If you do, it becomes a free-for-all, and then they’ve lost everything they’ve built over 75 years,” Stewart added.
Tony Stewart has no issues with the size of monetary sanctions despite the Chase Briscoe drama
Stewart and his co-owner Gene Haas paid the biggest single monetary sanction of the 2023 season, following Chase Briscoe’s No:14 was caught counterfeiting a part. They were given the first-ever L3 level penalty in the Next-Gen car era and were put in a situation where they had to win the race to progress into the playoffs.
But regardless of it, the former driver believes NASCAR is doing the right thing by giving increased monetary penalties as it will discourage teams from pushing the envelope to gain an unfair advantage. He added that the fines had helped NASCAR to have some control over unauthorized upgrades made to the car.
“I think if you want to get it under control, you’ve got to keep bumping it up to where it’s risk vs. reward. What are you willing to risk to get in the gray areas? I support NASCAR on that side. I feel like they’ve done a good job of trying to discourage teams from going above and beyond,” Tony Stewart said.
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