JGR Requests NASCAR's Reinstatement of Suspended Nationwide Crew Members

NASCAR's biggest cheating scandal of the 2008 season may finally be coming to a close for the guilty parties.

Joe Gibbs Racing's Nationwide Series crew members Dave Rogers, Jason Ratcliff and five others from the team all look to resume at-track duties at the season's second race in Los Angeles after the team applied for reinstatement last week.

The 7 team members were suspended by NASCAR indefinitely in August -- among a plethora of other fines and penalties -- after the sanctioning body discovered a plot to manipulate post-race engine data in favor of the Toyota teams following the Nationwide Series event at Michigan International Speedway.

The plot, as you might recall, involved the placement of magnetic spacers to the underside of the throttle on JGR's No. 18 and No. 20 following the MIS race. By doing so, the JGR team members hoped to create under-performing numbers during a post-race test used by NASCAR to gauge engine performance from each of the sport's manufacturers -- Toyota, Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge.

NASCAR ran the test once with the spacers in place and by doing so apparently noticed enough of a discrepency to thoroughly check each JGR race car in the test and eventually found the spacers. Such a device simply prevents the throttle pedal from reaching full capacity and therefore skews the test numbers NASCAR uses to make rule changes in the interest of competitive fairness.

The JGR team, which dominated Nationwide Series competition in 2008 both before and after the testing discrepency with a combined total of 19 races won, admitted to the tampering in the coming days and accepted NASCAR's punishment. As a result, Rogers and Ratcliff both missed the final ten races of 2008 as crew chiefs of the respective teams.

Pending NASCAR's approval for the crew chiefs and their five involved crew members to return to work at Daytona, JGR said during its media day with NASCAR reporters on the annual media tour that it would continue the team-imposed suspension for an additional week -- meaning that NASCAR's second weekend of 2009 at California's Auto Club Speedway would be their first race back the helm.

I can't totally say why JGR feels the need to hold its team members out for an additional week beyond NASCAR's punishment, but perhaps its a way for the team to acknowledge publicly the mistakes it had made in 2008. Regardless of the number of races the suspended crew members miss, the "cheater" label will follow them for quite a long time and NASCAR certainly will take some closer glances at the cars they field each week.

It's certainly a tough spot for JGR to be in -- Rogers and Ratcliff appear to be some of the hottest up-and-coming crew chief talent in the garage area and firing them would certainly stiffen the team's future competition -- but I'd say after nearly five months and 11 races missed from guiding their teams at the track, the time has come for the team and NASCAR to move on.