The first six races of the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series had gone really well for Ryan Newman. The driver of the No. 31 car was sitting eighth in points, 83 markers behind Sprint Cup Series championship leader Kevin Harvick. Though the season is still young, Newman has three top-five finishes, compared to last year when his first top-five was at Kentucky in late June.
On Tuesday, that all changed for the Richard Childress Racing team.
Following the race at Auto Club Speedway on March 22, NASCAR took the tires of several race teams back to the R&D Center in Charlotte. It found that Newman’s tires had been illegally manipulated at some point during the event.
At Martinsville Speedway, there was plenty of talk in the garage area about the tires from multiple race teams. The complaint was that some teams were drilling a 1/1000th of an inch hole in some of the tires that were being used on track. When teams drill a small hole in a tire it will lose air over a course of a green flag period. It will also gain grip and protect the tire from wearing.
“If it’s out there and they know about it, you should be gone forever,” Denny Hamlin said Friday at Martinsville Speedway. “This is a professional sport and when people alter tires that’s a big, big deal.”
So what are the penalties for Ryan Newman and Richard Childress Racing?
Since the infraction was a P5 penalty, there are major repercussions for all involved. Newman and team owner Richard Childress will be docked 75 driver and car-owner points. Crew chief Luke Lambert is suspended for the next six Sprint Cup Series races and fined $125,000. Tire-technician, James Bender and lead engineer Phillip Surgen are also suspended for the next six weeks.
This penalty drops Newman from eighth in the points down to 26th in the series standings, and is currently 43 points behind the 16th-place cutoff driver, Danica Patrick.
Though his qualifications for the Chase for the Sprint Cup have greatly shrunken, there was a reason why Newman was eighth in series standings. Through the first six races of the season, he allied up three top 5s with four top 10s, along with an average finish of 14.3. However, the team is at a greater risk of missing NASCAR’s version of the playoffs with a win, and that is something that he hasn’t done in his 42 races with Richard Childress Racing.
During his tenure with Richard Childress Racing, he has established himself as a consistent driver. The team finished second in points last season, and in 2015, Newman has gotten off to one of the best starts to a season in his 16-year career.
“We understand the seriousness of the penalty,” RCR president Torrey Galida said in a press release on Tuesday afternoon. “In fact, RCR has been one of the most outspoken opponents against tire bleeding since the rumors began to surface last season.”
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