There\u2019s cheating and then there\u2019s outright stupidity. Such was the case with Michael Waltrip Racing, when Waltrip\u2019s No. 55, in his and his team\u2019s very first race driving for Toyota, the 2007 Daytona 500,\u00a0was caught with an illegal additive \u2014 often described as jet fuel \u2014 in its intake system.<\/p>\n
The illegal additive, which was a surreptitious way of adding horsepower in a virtually undetectable manner, was discovered during pre-qualifying inspection when a NASCAR official noticed a strange smell coming out from under the hood, as well as the fuel having a different color than normal.<\/p>\n
While Waltrip and his team argued that somehow oil got into the fuel mixture, NASCAR wasn\u2019t buying the MWR story<\/a>. The end result was the biggest infraction that the sport had seen up to that point \u2014\u00a0a record<\/a> 100-point deduction and a $100,000 fine for crew chief David Hyder.<\/p>\n Waltrip was permitted to race a backup car, which NASCAR officials thoroughly inspected. Meanwhile, Hyder and team director Bobby Kennedy were both ejected from Daytona International Speedway and both were suspended indefinitely<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIndefinite means very long,\u201d Robin Pemberton, NASCAR vice-president of competition, said<\/a> at the time. \u201cThey were ejected, so they can\u2019t appeal not being here this weekend. At some future time, they\u2019ll apply and ask to be let back in, and we\u2019ll sit down and look into it.\u201d<\/p>\n What did Waltrip say in his and his team\u2019s defense?<\/p>\n Waltrip initially tried to deflect blame. \u201cThis is not the action of an organization, a manufacturer, or a sponsor. This was an independent act done without consent or authorization from me or any of my executive management team,\u201d Waltrip claimed<\/a>, distancing his team from the scandal.<\/p>\n Waltrip<\/a> would eventually take the blame for the incident, saying<\/a>, \u201cThis is my fault.\u201d <\/p>\n Throughout its history, NASCAR has seen episodes of cheating or \u201cpushing the envelope\u201d as some might say. Some greats such as NASCAR Hall of Famers Junior Johnson and Darrell Waltrip have invoked the same saying: \u201cIf you ain\u2019t cheating, you ain\u2019t trying.\u201d<\/p>\n But there\u2019s always one thing to remember: If you are trying to cheat, and if NASCAR finds out, you\u2019re going to find yourself in big trouble. Will the risk ultimately be worth the reward?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s cheating and then there\u2019s outright stupidity. Such was the case with Michael Waltrip Racing, when Waltrip\u2019s No.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-16062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114749252942855428","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}