Chad Knaus Makes Case for Hendrick's Appeal of Record NASCAR Penalties

• Hendrick Motorsports and Kaulig Racing are appealing the penalties, but Hendrick has asked the four-week crew chief suspensions begin this weekend at Atlanta.

• Currently, Hendrick isn’t working with Kaulig on the appeal, but noted there may be some communication in the future.

• Hendrick Motorsports competition vice president Chad Knaus said everything was “pretty messy right now” as they attempted to determine the angle the appeal would take.

Hendrick Motorsports competition vice president Chad Knaus called the penalties assessed by NASCAR for a vendor part violation a “terrible situation” for the sport and denied Friday that they incorporated anything learned in the Garage 56 project into the louvers confiscated by the sanctioning body.

Earlier this week, NASCAR suspended all four Hendrick crew chiefs for four Cup races, assessed them a $100,000 fine each, a 100-point loss for each driver and owner and a 10-point playoff deduction for each driver. NASCAR assessed the same penalty to Kaulig Racing’s No. 31 team.

Hendrick and Kaulig are appealing the penalties, but Hendrick has asked the crew chief suspension begin this weekend at Atlanta. Kaulig has requested that crew chief Trent Owens’ suspension be delayed until the appeal is heard. Hendrick substitute crew chiefs are Kevin Meendering for Kyle Larson, Tom Gray for Josh Berry, Brian Campe for William Byron and Greg Ives for Alex Bowman.

The appeal date hasn’t been set.

Currently, Hendrick isn’t working with Kaulig on the appeal, but noted there may be some communication in the future.

Knaus said everything was “pretty messy right now” as they attempted to determine the angle the appeal would take.

“I think it’s a terrible situation not only for us but the industry,” Knaus said. “It’s ugly. Every one of these teams are being held accountable to put their car out there to go through inspection and perform at the level they need to … but nobody is holding the single-source providers accountable at the level they need to be to give us the parts that we need. That goes through NASCAR’s distribution center and NASCAR’s approval process to get those parts and we’re not getting the right parts.”

When Knaus was asked if he thought the team was penalized for faulty parts or for parts that they modified in a way they thought was acceptable to NASCAR, he replied, “We’ve got a brand-new set of these parts that we could go pull off the shelf right now that NASCAR deemed illegal, inappropriate for us to race.”

“We have a CAD that has been submitted by the OEM and the OEM gives that CAD to NASCAR and it’s NASCAR’s responsibility to make sure that the parts we get fits that CAD,” Knaus said.

NASCAR Senior Vice President for Competition Elton Sawyer said the louvers had been modified. Knaus stopped short of agreeing with Sawyer, saying “We made sure that our car parts fit the hood and the hood closed and did all the stuff it needed to do.”

Knaus doesn’t understand why the penalties were assessed for a voluntary inspection. He said the only inspection mandated when they arrived at Phoenix Raceway for the 50-minute practice session was for safety and the engine.

“We typically choose to go ahead and put the car in for the voluntary inspection so NASCAR has the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, we don’t like this or maybe you need to tweak that or whatever it may be,’” Knaus said. “That’s been pretty much the standard cadence.”

Knaus admitted that if he had known there was something illegal about the louvers, he would have removed them and burned them before NASCAR returned to take them four hours after first inspecting the car.

There has been speculation that Hendrick incorporated something into the louvers that the team learned in its Garage 56 project, but Knaus said the louvers weren’t connected to the car being developed for the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

“That’s a completely different package,” Knaus said. “It doesn’t even have the same cooling package, the same engine, nothing of that translates.”