NASCAR: What did the “biggest cheater of all time” have to say about cheating?

"“I’ve been around race cars for 60 years or more now. There are really only a few things I consider cheating: 1, Big engine. 2. Big gas tank. 3. Hi buck very expensive materials, in reference to weight saving. [AKA titanium parts] 4. Blatant, very expansive aerodynamic rule violation. ……… big engines and big gas tanks, I have no mental tolerance for either. Sure, if a poor-boy racer bores his engine .010 [inches], too big because he can’t afford a new block, I don’t give a damn about that. But that son-of-a-bitch who runs a ‘400-incher’ against a 358, to me, he is a s***. Christ, it don’t take brains to win that way. Same with “big tanker”, if he goes a half-gallon over, I don’t care. But that cat who was five or six gallons over, or with a hidden tank, in my book, he was dog s***. This was the cat who was gonna make four stops, to the legal cat’s five…… What brains does that take?”"

Carl Long knows how it feels to be caught by NASCAR for this. He still cannot pay off his $100,000 fine for his big engine in 2009 during an exhibition race (The All Star open), and has since had to sell off all of his small operation. Also notable to the Penske boys: Yunick didn’t have to deal with the whole legal today, kinda not legal tomorrow deal they went through at Texas-

"“Sure, I did [go into the gray area of the rule book]. But, was it cheating? After all, they checked the parts before the race and said ‘You’re legal.’ What self respecting bank robber would write a letter to a bank and tell’em when and how he was gonna rob the bank? Chad might of had a little controversy in his career, but at the end of the day he’s had 5 championships in 5 years. Credit: Speedtv.com You gotta remember, this whole time there are a group of ‘Little Angels,’ like Teague, Fox, Vogt, Moore, Moody, Owens, Buck Baker, Shuman, Thomas, Petty, and about 30 more, all of whom could bend the rules into a pretzel, that I had to deal with on the track each race. Even though I only got through the 10th grade and some of the others really couldn’t read or write, we all learned what tricks, legal or illegal, made a car go fast…… Maybe I just worked a little harder to find a bit more speed. …….. Actually, some of today’s NASCAR engine men, will never know the thrill of an experiment that really worked. They’ll never know the pleasure of walking out to the cars race morning, where you pull your pants up and look around at your competition and say ‘Allright you bastards, let’s have a race’ and watch your new invention ‘do it.'”"

That is what separates the great crew chiefs of today, such as a Chad Knaus or a Paul Wolfe, from the good to decent crew chiefs today. Notice Smokey said “some”- at the time he was writing this, Ray Evernham was dominating the Cup series with Jeff Gordon. Jeff is a great driver, but it would be stupid to say he dominated based off of pure talent alone. If he did, why has he only won one championship and 30 some races after 13 years Evernham-less, when he won 3 championships and over 50 races with Evernham the 7 years they were together?

The modern day Evernham is Knaus. Like Evernham, Knaus has had some questionable parts- Evernham had the T-Rex car and Knaus had last year’s Daytona C-Post. But yet, Rick Hendrick would never fire Kanus, even if Chad were to show up next week with a jet engine on the car, simply because Chad is a rarity in the garage area- a guy who will go for the grey areas of the rulebook and try use them to his advantage. How else would the 48 of won 5 straight championships? And it’s arguable that if it wasn’t for bad luck at Homestead, they might of cruised to a 6th championship last year.

At the end of the day, cheating in NASCAR will always be there, whether in defense (as in everybody else is cheating, so cheat back), or “experimenting”. If I were to run a Cup team, I’d fire my crew chief if he’s just going to twiddle his thumbs all week long and try to win on setup and strategy come Sunday. Smokey won a ton of races and a few championships (With 2013 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Herb Thomas), and he never twiddled his thumbs at all when it came to experimenting with the car. Neither does Knaus or the Penske guys. That’s why they win races and championships.