Alex Bowman, William Byron penalised again

Hendrick Motorsports and NASCAR‘s inspection team are probably not on each other’s Christmas greeting lists this year.

A week after Hendrick drivers Alex Bowman and William Byron, as well as their team-mate Kyle Larson and the #9 car of Chase Elliott and his injury substitutes, got their 100-point penalties for louver violations slashed upon appeal, the two have now lost sixty points and five playoff points each for violating NASCAR’s vehicle assembly policy concerning the car’s greenhouse.

Bowman and Byron’s cars were taken to NASCAR’s research and development centre for further inspection following Sunday’s Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway, where they respectively finished eighth and twenty-fourth.

The greenhouse is the region above the door and between the front and rear windows (pictured below). In particular, the offenders broke 14.1.2.B of the rulebook concerning the “Engineering Change Log”, which states the greenhouse “may be modified to accommodate a windshield wiper motor where required” but it must also be within certain dimensions (depicted in featured image).

Credit: NASCAR

Both drivers were already without their regular crew chiefs Rudy Fugle (Byron) and Blake Harris (Bowman) as they continue to serve their four-race suspensions for the louver penalty. With this infraction, their replacements Brian Campe and Greg Ives have also been suspended for two races beginning 13 April. Campe and Ives have also been fined USD$75,000 (€68,697) each.

While NASCAR has often been viewed as showing favouritism towards Hendrick as one of the top teams in the sport, the sanctioning body had disapproved of the 100-point penalty being overturned. Fans have speculated that the greenhouse penalty is a veiled form of retaliation as cars are randomly selected for R&D centre visits, which some jokingly compared to athletes receiving random drug tests after an unusually impressive performance.

Due to the sixty-point penalty, Bowman once again loses the championship lead and falls to seventh. Byron now sits fourteenth after leaving Richmond in fourth.