Story By; NASCAR – CONCORD, NC – Following teardown at the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina, there will not be further penalties to Halmar Racing and its No. 52 team after its primary truck was confiscated at Kentucky Speedway on Thursday morning.
NASCAR officials said then they found the truck to be not acceptable, and confiscated it for further evaluation at the R&D Center after finding a firewall issue in the vehicle.
That evaluation happened Tuesday, and no further penalties were issued. Driver Stewart Friesen was forced to race at Kentucky with his backup vehicle, and he started from the rear of the field. No team members were ejected.
Friesen, who is second in the Gander Trucks points standings, finished second Thursday night.
Though confiscating a truck is a unique situation, it’s not all that rare for NASCAR officials to have a team fix something that is in violation of the rule book. NASCAR officials saw something on the No. 52 that didn’t conform to the rule book, and the team had the opportunity to fix the issue.
The team could not fix the problem at the track, so NASCAR confiscated the truck and its parts and issued a “rear of the field” penalty. The at-track penalties issued are the only penalties for this Opening Day Inspection violation.
