Filed by Lindsey Young
Say this for Roush Fenway Racing's Geoff Smith, he's quite the wordsmith. Though the team president for Carl Edwards knew his recent rant directed at the NASCAR penalty the team received at Dover was a waste of time, he was able to show off his massive vocabulary. Here's a snippet (a word Smith surely would like):
"We have the misfortune of violating a rule wich makes no sense," he said, just getting started. "It was promulgated (huh?) to address restrictor plate races, not downforce races. I say misfortune because we are peing penalized for a violation that actually impaired the car's performance."
He later called the penalty an "unfair assessment", added something about "net effect" and closed with a solution on how to "equalize the penalty" for Chase competitors. Impressive stuff, except that he's just spitting into the wind.
Smith and owner Roush may be entirely correct that what the team was penalized for, a rear fender height infraction, had nothing to do with how Edwards' car performed in dominating Sunday's race. But, they're beating a dead horse here. It was also said that the penalties given at Daytona for Ray Evernham's teams and later for Dale Earnhardt Jr. were for infractions that didn't help the cars. Doesn't matter.
NASCAR, believe it or not, is trying to take the judgement decision out of this. A penalty is a penalty, period, whether it was intentional or not, beneficial or not. It may be unfair to be penalized for something, as the team said, that actually hurt the car's handling, but Geoff Smith knows how this works. He made his point -- and rather impressively at that -- but it was all for show.
