Truex, Johnson escape penalties as NASCAR tweaks 'unfair' rules

NASCAR moved quickly to adjust its penalty structure again on Wednesday, just one week after announcing a new tiered system for post-race penalties.

The system was immediately put to the test Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway, when both race winner Martin Truex Jr. and 12th-place finisher Jimmie Johnson failed to make it through the post-race laser inspection station (LIS).

A typical penalty in that situation — 10 points — would not have hurt Truex but would have significantly impacted Johnson. That's because a win in the Chase for the Sprint Cup playoff means an automatic berth in the next round — making a points penalty irrelevant.

That struck officials as unfair. So on Wednesday, NASCAR announced it would not penalize Truex or Johnson at all — and completely eliminated the minor penalties for failing inspection.

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"This one is on us," NASCAR vice president of competition Scott Miller said. "We missed that. It’s something that’s not fair, it’s hard to understand and we’re doing our best to rectify that."

The only remaining penalty for failing the post-race LIS is a mammoth one: If a car is found to be significantly out of tolerance (more than any car has been all year), then NASCAR will view it as an "encumbered" finish and remove the benefits that would come with a victory.

Teams will now be free to go as close to that line as they choose, but at their own peril. If they get into "encumbered" territory, their championship hopes would likely be over.

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"We don’t want to be talking about post-race penalties," NASCAR executive vice president Steve O'Donnell said. "Our goal is to never penalize anybody and we want to be talking about the action on the track. This is hopefully enough of a deterrent to not have teams go there."

In addition, NASCAR announced it will now run all Chase-eligible cars through post-race inspection — instead of just the top finishers — and would move to limit cars hitting one another on the cool-down lap to help avoid scrutiny in inspection.

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