Sprint Cup Series: 99 Team Likely Will Pay Steep Price For Vegas Win

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

With victories in Fontana and Las Vegas, Carl Edwards' West Coast swing was simply spectacular.

LAS VEGAS -- Carl Edwards and the No. 99 Ford team may receive penalties for a postrace inspection hiccup Sunday. No matter what happens, Edwards probably will go in the record book as the winner of the UAW-Dodge 400.

This is NASCAR's dilemma when a winning car has issues in the inspection process after the Victory Lane celebration.

NASCAR doesn't want to take a win away after the race ends. In the eyes of NASCAR officials, the fans deserve to know who won the race.

People who paid their money to sit in the grandstands, and millions who watch at home, should walk away from the track, or leave their dens, knowing they saw the right man take the checkered flag.

That's how the theory goes, but it has some flaws. A team could deliberately violate the rules to win a race, knowing NASCAR wouldn't take the win away from it.

What NASCAR hopes to do is make the penalty severe enough that breaking the rules wasn't worth it even if the driver still goes down as the winner.

NASCAR also tries to show consistency in how these penalties are applied, which could be bad news for Edwards and the 99 team.

Five Nationwide teams were penalized for a similar violation two weeks ago at Daytona. All five cars had an oil tank reservoir cover that wasn't fastened securely.

The oil tank cover was completely off of the 99 Fusion when inspected after Edwards' victory. The car was impounded and taken to NASCAR's Research & Development Center in Concord, N.C.

If the lid cover is loose or off, it can give the car a slight aerodynamic advantage. Even if it doesn't, that's beside the point for NASCAR. The rule states you have to have it and it must be secured.

Maybe there's a legitimate reason why the lid came off. Those five Nationwide teams probably argued that point, also.

But NASCAR took 25 points away from each team and suspended each crew chief for six weeks, along with fining the crew chiefs $15,000.

A 25-point penalty for Edwards would drop him from first to second in the Sprint Cup standings.

Losing crew chief Bob Osborne for six weeks also could hurt a team that's on a roll with back-to-back victories. Edwards often says the biggest reason for his resurgence is getting Osborne back as his crew chief.

A decision could come Tuesday, but it might be later this week. It probably will take two days to get the car from Las Vegas to North Carolina before inspectors can look at it and make a judgment call on what happened.

-- Terry Blount

Nationwide Series: Good News For Chevrolet

LAS VEGAS -- On the bright side, at least for those who don't drive Toyotas in the Nationwide Series, is the fact that it was a Chevrolet pulling into Victory Lane at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The downside for those happy folks in Vegas is all the extenuating circumstances it took for that to be the case.

The Sam's Town 300 was shaping up as another episode of the Tony & Kyle Show, with the only question seemingly being whether Tony Stewart would win his third straight race, or whether Vegas native Kyle Busch would take the honors after a pair of runner-up finishes.

Instead, misfortune struck both and that opened it up for the rest of the field. A blown right front tire ended Busch's chances, and contact with David Reutimann sent Stewart into the wall. Combined with Busch's wreck during qualifying, Joe Gibbs Racing headed home with three crashed Camrys.

For the fabricators in Huntersville, N.C., what happened in Vegas clearly didn't stay there since they'll be the ones rebuilding the cars.

Mangled cars were a theme in Vegas as 13 cautions slowed the action repeatedly. And a penalty to Stewart for speeding on pit road during one of the cautions paved the way for Mark Martin to spend much of the day at the front.

Still more pit strategy, though, left Martin out of the lead down the stretch. Instead, JR Motorsports teammate Brad Keselowski was at the front of the pack and in search of his first win.

For a series dominated by Sprint Cup drivers, a Keselowski win would have been big. First, though, he'd have to hold off defending champion Carl Edwards and Martin. And that wasn't to be, as Martin got into Edwards and the contact sent Edwards into Keselowski -- sending Martin to the win.

The Chevrolets, at least on this day, were able to return to Victory Lane. The big question is how competitive they'll be at Atlanta, where Jeff Burton has won the last two years in a Richard Childress Racing Chevy.

And while Edwards was in contention to win, and Greg Biffle ended up second in another Roush Fenway Racing Ford, it remains to be seen whether the Fords are up to speed yet this season.

If there's good news for the non-Toyota teams, it's that Stewart's not running this race. The bad news is that Kyle Busch will be in the No. 20 Camry that's already won twice this year.

-- Mark Ashenfelter