“It’s a terrible situation”: Hendrick Motorsports Vice President speaks up about NASCAR’s penalty

Hendrick Motorsports finds itself in a grave situation after NASCAR lashed out huge penalties for the team on Wednesday (March 15). The team was penalized for modifying hood louvers without the approval of the sanctioning body. However, Hendrick officials believe that the new spec parts for the 2023 Cup Series season have put the team in a bad place.

Chad Knaus, Vice President of competition at Hendrick Motorsports, revealed that there have been discrepancies in parts that the team expected to receive and what they received. It is this discrepancy that has brought trouble for the organization.

Knaus said in the Friday interview at Atlanta:

"It’s a terrible situation, not only for us, but for the industry, to be quite honest with you. That’s what I dislike the most. It’s ugly. We shouldn’t be in this situation and it’s really unfortunate that we are because it doesn’t help anyone."

The HMS Vice President further argued that only the team was being held accountable. He felt that the single-source vendors should equally take the blame for delivering such parts. He said:

"Nobody is holding the single-source providers accountable at the level they need to be to give us the parts that we need. Now, that goes through NASCAR’s distribution center and NASCAR’s approval process and we’re not getting the right parts."

Based on these arguments, Hendrick Motorsports decided to appeal against the penalties. In a statement released by the team, it stated three facts on which it bases its arguments.

The statement read:

• Louvers provided to teams through NASCAR’s mandated single-source supplier do not match the design submitted by the manufacturer and approved by NASCAR
• Documented inconsistent and unclear communication by the sanctioning body specifically related to louvers
• Recent comparable penalties issued by NASCAR have been related to issues discovered during a post-race inspection.

Knaus spoke about the discrepancies between the parts, saying:

"When we started to get parts at the beginning of the 2023 season, we didn’t have the parts that we thought we were going to have."

He added:

"Through a tremendous amount of back-and-forth with NASCAR and the OEM and the teams there’s been conversations about whether we can clean up the parts, not clean up the parts and it’s changed quite honestly every couple weeks."

Even with the driver penalties, Hendrick Motorsports has an optimistic outlook for the rest of the season.

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Hendrick Motorsports announces interim crew chiefs

The HMS crew chiefs received a four-race suspension along with a $100,000 fine each for the incident. Hendrick Motorsports has decided not to appeal the suspension. They have also announced interim crew chiefs for their four entries.

• Kevin Meendering - #5 Kyle Larson
• Brian Campe - #24 William Byron
• Greg Ives - #48 Alex Bowman
• Tom Gray - #9 Josh Berry

All four crew chiefs have an engineering background. Chad Knaus is confident that the interim crew is capable of executing a solid weekend as he said:

"Tom Gray, tremendous amount of experience, worked closely with the No. 9 team and Alan Gustafson. We’ve got Kevin Meendering who unfortunately had to sit in last year on the No. 5. Greg (Ives), he’s right at home at the No. 48 and Brian Campe is a great fit for the No. 24."