First off John, these aren’t stock cars. They haven’t been stock cars since the late 1960’s. Secondly, while the garage may be open to walk around and look, the teams are very protective about some things. We’ve seen several good examples on the race weekend when crewmembers blocked TV camera crews from filming what was being done by various crews.
I know from my own experiences in the garage area that teams are very protective about what springs they’re running on their suspension, what shocks they’re using, what size sway bars they’re using, how they’ve got their engines timed, and how they’ve got their carbs jetted. So not everything is as open as you’d like folks to believe.
And if things are so open, why won’t Toyota sell their racing engine parts to independent engine builders? Faux King Brian issued a Royal Decree asking Toyota to allow independent engine builders to have access to their parts so they could build engines but to no avail. So to say things are wide open is sort of like a certain past President saying it depends on what your definition of “is” is.
"It's not a PIN number to somebody's bank account. It's a swaybar, a very simple, very non-smart kind of a part, and I don't know why it's amplified to where it has." - John Darby
"One bar was missing. It was serialized. We knew which bar it was.” - Jack Roush
Non-smart like certain officials in the garage area or non-smart in that it’s just a hunk of metal? You can buy various standardized sway bars from various suppliers, which I’m sure teams at lower levels of competition do. But we’re talking NA$CAR’s top tier of racing here, not somebody trying to just break into racing. Teams spend a small fortune on engineering to figure out the angles on the ends of the sway bars, the overall construction of them, and the metallurgy to figure out how stiff or how flexible the sway bars need to be. So while the sway bar by itself may not be a “thinking” part, there is a lot of thinking that goes on in the building of the part and it’s connection to the rest of the car and it’s performance and handling. And as Jack had the part serialized, it actually would be similar to a PIN number so he can keep track of it.
"Stuff like that happens all the time; some by accident, some on purpose. Those guys need to fix it themselves. We don't get in the middle of team squabbles.” -Robin Pemberton, NASCAR Vice President of Competition
“There are people ready to sweep dirt under a rug. I don’t want to embarrass the sponsor. I really don’t want to embarrass the team, but I also don’t want to be made to either look stupid or complicit as it regulates to the things that might occur within my team or have occurred within my team as it relates to NA$CAR’s rules. It is interesting that the high standard that we’ve got, for the things that the teams would do in an effort to race with one another, doesn’t apply to the simple moral conduct that - for me to have to go to the courts and the rules of the broader society to deal with this problem will be a disappointment to me. I’m not going to comment more on that.” - Jack Roush
"I've had three discussions with NASCAR people, not all the same person, as I attempted to work my way through this with an appropriate sanction and relief could be given to me for the theft that occurred. I still don't have a satisfactory resolution to that.” - Jack Roush
So you’re telling me that when the GM teams were whining back in the ‘90s about Ford having an aero advantage that NA$CAR didn’t step in and give them concessions. And when GM stole the trunk design from an experimental Ford prototype, NA$CAR stopped it from being used on the then new Monte Carlo. NA$CAR only gets involved with team or manufacturer squabbles when it’s to NA$CAR’s benefit (i.e. money). And yes, NA$CAR would sweep things under the rug to keep from having an uproar from the teams, fans, and manufacturers. They won’t acknowledge the fact that they did Tim Richmond wrong. They won’t admit they’ve done drivers wrong by not having policies and programs in place to take care of injured drivers or the widows and children of deceased drivers. They also won’t admit to letting drivers modify their cars under the noses of inspectors. They won’t admit to allowing drivers to run engines which were totally illegal. So if you think that NA$CAR won’t sweep this under the rug to protect themselves, think again.
“I don’t understand the whole procedure when a tear down happens.” “The only thing I know is it wound up with parts we had and [which were] returned to Roush. It’s unfortunate it happened the way it did. It wasn’t anything intentional. There’s no reason to be done intentional. I have no idea how it happened to begin with.” Jim Aust, Toyota Racing President
“Well, imagine this. The toolboxes are back-to-back, these bars - maybe a half-dozen of them at any given point in time - are underneath the toolbox. The other team, the non-descript Toyota team, went behind my toolbox and took my bar out of my inventory and put it with their inventory and took it home with them.” “That’s a fact. It has not been refuted, and it has been discussed with the team involved.” - Jack Roush
If you don’t understand the tear down procedure or where it happens, then what the heck are you doing running a racing program? Unfortunate that it happened or unfortunate that one of your teams got caught with their pants down? I would say grabbing somebody’s sway bar would be intentional, especially since it had to be taken from a team’s tool box or hauler. Both tool boxes and haulers are well marked with sponsor and manufacturer logos on them, so it shouldn’t be too hard to be able to tell the ABC Plumbing Company Yugo team’s tool box or hauler from that of the XYZ Widget Manufacturing Nash Rambler team. So the excuse of “they all look alike” doesn’t work.
Dale Jr. weighed in on this saying that stealing parts from another team was wrong.
"Following teardown on Monday afternoon a valve spring that was not ours ended up at TRD's California location. However, in less than 24 hours, that part was returned to the appropriate party. We made NASCAR aware of that incident, and they indicated it was not an issue."
- Lee White, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Toyota Racing Development
As we’ve seen numerous times last year with the engine failures of two Chevy teams, the blame lay with the valve springs and we were also told by the talking heads that the valve springs were bought in bulk because of the lot numbers that were used. So sure, it would be easy to mistake a valve spring from one manufacturer for another manufacturer, but a valve spring is not a sway bar and neither can be mistaken for the other.
Roush said the team sandblasted the custom paint off the swaybar and tried to have the vendor that created it for RFR duplicate the ends that make it fit.
If Roush knows that this was done (and he does), he knows who the team was that did it (Mikey Waltrip admitted to it). So this doesn’t seem to be much ado about nothing. It was a deliberate effort to conceal the fact that the part was stolen from RFR.
The parts vendor told Roush that they had been approached by MWR to have identical copies made to fit the MWR Toyotas. So there was no mistake and this was no innocent act despite Mikey’s best acting efforts.
“Within the confines - the package that NASCAR gives you, the material, the dimension, all those things - we designed our own part and we did an analysis of it.” “We optimized the torsional effect of it with minimizing the weight of it though heat treating and material selection and the way components were machined and the way it was assembled.”Jack Roush
Based on this information, this sway bar is the
intellectual property of RFR. So anyone stealing
it would definitely be in a pickle. Using it without
the permission of RFR would also be another
legal point of contention. And as the vendor
stepped forward and identified the team (MWR)
and their actions to try to disguise the part as
one of their own, it looks like Jack definitely has
a leg to stand on in court.
“It’s basically lawyer time.” - Jack Roush
And a tip of the hat to Naval Mobile Construction
Battalion (NMCB) 74 which began construction
in Trinidad and Tobago, March 25, on a
community clinic, the first of several engineering assistance projects planned for New Horizons/Beyond the Horizons (NH/BTH) 2008. Another great hearts and minds project to help out medical facilities and to save kids who can’t get decent medical care. Way to go folks.
Motherhood, Apple Pie, & John Wayne
Mad Mikie
Curmudgeon at Large
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