France warns of tougher CoT penalties

In the wake of the recent penalties imposed on the Hendrick Motorsports teams of Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson for failing the Friday inspection at Sonoma with their CoT cars, France said during a teleconference that they are seeking to escalate the punishment on infractions found on the new car.

"We feel very strongly that we're going to be very, very tough on people that test us with the Car of Tomorrow," France said. "We have kept a very steady theme that we're going to continue to escalate the penalties."

"In fact, with the 24 (Jeff Gordon), 48 (Jimmie Johnson) at Sears Point, we added on not letting them qualify at a road course, which pretty much eliminated them from contention of winning that race in our view. I think the drivers would agree, and significant points and monetary fine.

"We'll continue to do that, in particular with second repeat offenders to get the penalty right."

Some people expected a tougher penalty on the Hendrick teams for their rule violations at Sonoma, but France said they will be consistent with the punishment, and won't issue different levels of penalties according to whom they are punishing.

"What we can't do, though, is customize penalties, because in this case, the 24 has a big points lead," France added. "Meaning that, you know, the 24 car who had compiled a lot of points, we could not just say, 'It's going to be 200 points instead of 100 points because he's got a big points lead'. That's not how we can administer the rules."

France stated that they will also try to control that crew chiefs and team members properly serve suspensions.

It has been said that some of the crew chiefs currently banned from the races have actually been around the track area and in continuous contact with their teams during the race weekends.

He also accepted that while teams will always push the envelope in terms of development, NASCAR is not a technology-driven sport and races should be won by drivers and teams making the difference.

"There's always going to be plenty of creativity to be had," France said. "We love the fact, and you're hearing it from the drivers, it's putting it back into the hands of the drivers.

"We are not in a technology contest, although there's a lot of technology that flows around our industry. We're happy about that. But we want it in the drivers' hands."